Revelations from Recent Study Show Over 1.4 Million Discontinuous Permanent Workers in Spain

Researchers from Fedea, including Florentino Felgueroso and Marcel Jansen, have recently released a study titled “How many are discontinuous permanent workers?” that sheds light on this important issue. The study reveals that there were 1.42 million employees with a discontinuous permanent contract in Spain at the end of 2022. This figure was obtained through microdata of Social Security affiliation collected by the Continuous Sample of Working Lives (MCVL) and shows the current situation after the labor reform that expanded the scope of discontinuous permanent jobs.

The study highlights that one in four of these workers is also engaged in moonlighting, whether they are active or inactive. The data indicates that there were 2.3 million discontinuous fixed contracts made in 2022, but after refining the data, the actual number of employees with this contract type was 1.42 million.

Regarding the activity status of these workers, the study shows that the number of active and inactive workers fluctuated throughout the year. By the end of 2022, there were more inactive workers than active ones, with a significant portion of the workforce having another job registered with Social Security. These findings challenge existing methods used by government and other entities to measure discontinuous permanent employees.

The study outlines three different indicators that have been used to measure these workers, highlighting their limitations and inaccuracies. The authors emphasize that microdata histories of affiliation offer the most reliable information on this topic. They stress