Government Plans To Spend Three Times Less This Year On Ertes

The Government estimates to spend a total of 7,972 million euros in 2021 to pay for the mechanism of the covid ertes and extraordinary aid for self-employed workers . It is an investment 3.6 times less than the one allocated during the 2020 financial year, which reached 29,311 million euros, due to the prospects for an improvement in the labor market for the current financial year.

Fewer companies using erte, less public spending. This is reflected in the document of the Stability Program 2021-2024 sent this Friday to the European Commission. In it, the Executive transfers a scenario of progressive improvement in labor, with an unemployment rate that will close this 2021 at 15.2% (currently it is at 15.98% ) and that it will decrease with greater intensity from 2022.

The projections prepared by the department led by Nadia Calviño foresee a reactivation of economic activity and an increase in the hours worked. That is, more companies operating and operating more hours.

The weight of ertes as an employment protection mechanism has been decreasing since the confinement of the first state of alarm, when in the spring of 2020 it reached 3.5 million workers. And, despite the brief rebound experienced during the third wave, that number has been declining, to the current 665,000 suspended workers.

This reactivation of the work centers is reflected in the Government numbers provided to Brussels. Especially in sectors that today have practically no activity, such as tourism. “The normalization of tourist activity in 2022 will allow the reactivation of the foreign sector,” according to the Executive, and this will have a direct impact on the increase in hours worked.

According to this, the number of hours worked in 2021 will increase 7.6% compared to the previous year, which came from a historical fall of 10.4%. Subsequently, the expected increases will moderate at rates between 2.1% and 1.2%; so pre-pandemic work levels won’t recover until 2024 at the earliest .

The coronavirus crisis will not trigger a wage devaluation or a moderation of the agreed increases, which may cause a loss of purchasing power. Different script from the one that occurred in the previous crisis.

At least that is how it is derived from the official calculations of the Executive. In terms of salaries, 2021 will be a year of parenthesis, with an expected increase of 0.9% in the average compensation per employee. And in the coming years this salary revision will gain power and will be located in a range between 1.5% and 1.8% between 2022 and 2024.