Despite the uncertainty caused by inflation and the conflict in Ukraine, the European labor market is experiencing an unprecedented ‘overheating’ that . The result is that job vacancies remain at record highs and several countries, such as Germany and the Netherlands, outnumber the unemployed.
According to the latest data published by Eurostat, the number of offers per unemployed person reached 1.77 for the Czechs, 1.47 for the Germans, 1.45 for the Dutch and 1.04 for the unemployed in the second quarter of the year. the Austrians. In the United States, in July this ratio stood at 1.86.
The data give an idea that the high volume of offers is maintained in Europe despite a difficult situation in the second half, marked by the Russian invasion. It is not the first time that vacancies have exceeded the unemployed in these countries (it already happened in the months before the pandemic), although never with a large difference like the one registered now: the excess of offers reaches almost 600,000 offers in Germany .
In four other EU members (Luxembourg, Belgium, Slovenia and Hungary), the ratio is already over 0.5. That is, there are still more unemployed than offers, but the percentage is high.
To appreciate it, one need only make a comparison with the case of Spain, where the ratio is more than ten times lower: it stands at 0.047%, the second lowest in the entire European Union, only surpassed downward by Greece ( 0.033%)
To appreciate the full extent of these figures, we must resort to the vacancy rate. This variable is expressed as a percentage of the number of offers over the total number of jobs (either filled or demanded by companies). Here the composition is somewhat different: the highest level is scored by the Netherlands, followed by Belgium. In this case, Spain continues to have the lowest, tied with Romania.
In the United States this ratio is higher, 6.9%, which is not an obstacle for it to be a figure of concern in the European Union and, especially, the European Central Bank. The reason is that a high vacancy rate can become, in countries where there is little labor available (ie low unemployment), an element of additional pressure on wages. And also about a collective bargaining already stressed by the increase in prices.
This is what has happened in the United States and in some European countries such as Poland and Hungary. Although the consensus of analysts is that in the euro zone, where the main economies (Germany, France, Italy and Spain) prioritize sectoral agreements in their social dialogue, than in the United States.
Some even dare to go further and venture that this excess of vacancies can have a positive effect and even protect employment to a certain extent from the worsening of the situation due to the war and the tightening of monetary policy.
The thesis is that companies will cool down the demand for workers instead of resorting directly to layoffs. In countries with a very low unemployment rate, this will not have a negative effect. The same cannot be said of countries with few vacancies and high unemployment, such as Spain.
In any case, these data correspond to June. Therefore, they do not include the impact of the ECB rate hikes and the growing restrictions on Russian gas. In this sense, the statistics lag behind the economic news. However, in Germany there has been a decrease from 5.3% to 4.9% in vacancies between the first and second quarters
Spain is different?
One of the mysteries of the vacancies is, precisely, the performance of our country. According to Eurostat, in the second quarter 137,931 vacancies were registered (145,053 according to the INE). It is the highest figure in the entire historical series. However, employers speak daily of a lack of vacancies in specific sectors, such as technology or hospitality, which far exceed this figure.
It may be objected that in other countries companies have the obligation to communicate their vacancies to the public employment services (in Spain barely 40,000 are communicated per month on average).
Even so, the enormous difference both in the ratio of unemployed and in the rate of total employment with EU countries that use the same methodology, defined by Eurostat, is surprising. In the current context it can be a problem even to prepare economic forecasts.
That is why the Government, in the future Employment Law, wants to improve vacancy statistics by forcing the private sector to notify all its vacancies. Only if this measure succeeds will we know if the current data responds to a mere question of computation or to a much deeper maladjustment of our economy.
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