The Secretary of State for Labor, Joaquín Pérez Rey, has calculated this Tuesday that the extraordinary process of regularization of foreign persons would be behind around 15,000 new registrations in the registered unemployment during July, although he has emphasized that it is still "too early" to make a detailed assessment of the impact of a procedure that is still ongoing.
In the press conference in which he announced the figures of registered unemployment and affiliation to Social Security for the month of July, Pérez Rey pointed out that regularization is among the elements that explain the increase in unemployment recorded during that period.
As he explained, most of those obtaining their permits through this extraordinary process are joining the affiliation to Social Security and "only a small part goes to registered unemployment," which the Ministry of Labor places "around 15,000 people."
The Secretary of State has expressed himself as "quite convinced" that the presence of these people on the unemployment lists will be a "technical, administrative transition," prior to their effective integration into the labor market.
However, when asked later about the concrete effect of regularization on the total number of unemployed, Pérez Rey admitted that the department still does not have a statistical breakdown that allows for the precise identification of the origin of all the new registrations.
In this regard, he clarified that the increase of 8,268 people recorded in July within the group without previous employment cannot be completely linked to the extraordinary process, given that this group also includes, for example, students entering the labor market for the first time or other people who choose to initially register with public employment services.
The Secretary of State reiterated that the general pattern is that beneficiaries of regularization "go directly to affiliation and not to registered unemployment" and emphasized that their possible prior passage through public employment services will likely be the "prologue" or "prelude" to future hiring.
He also indicated that the effects of the extraordinary procedure on the statistics of affiliation and registered unemployment "will continue to be felt in the coming months."
Inspection uncovers 11,000 undeclared jobs
In parallel, Pérez Rey has indicated that a part of the people welcomed into the process would have developed their activity previously in the underground economy or in undeclared positions, and has emphasized that the regularization will serve to combat undeclared work and situations of labor exploitation that affect foreign workers.
In this framework, he has detailed that the Labor Inspection has identified so far this year about 11,000 undeclared labor relationships corresponding to foreign employees.
The Secretary of State has defended that the regularization will make it possible for those who until now worked outside the regulations to be hired regularly and access the rights recognized by labor legislation.