The deputy of Unidas por Extremadura in the Assembly, José Francisco Llera, has lamented that the employment generated in the community during the past month of July is "seasonal" and has predicted that it will "vanish" once the summer campaign concludes.
Llera has pointed out that the regional government of PP and Vox will use the drop in unemployment as a "publicity shield," ignoring that it is "seasonal employment, very linked to the summer months and that, very possibly, will vanish once this ends."
In reference to the latest data from the Active Population Survey (EPA), known last week, the parliamentarian has emphasized that they clearly reflect the real situation of the labor market in Extremadura and that, no matter how much the Junta "tries to gloss over" the image with the figures from July, the underlying trend continues marked by "precariousness and lack of protection."
"It is not enough with the media management of the statistics, nor to be dragged along by the employment policies implemented in the State. The government of Guardiola has to intervene because employment in Extremadura has its peculiarities and they are not being addressed; they are being carried away by the inertia of the market in the whole country," he stated in a press conference.
Extremadura, trapped in a model that chronicizes seasonality
Llera has insisted that, despite the general context of economic growth, Extremadura continues "trapped" in a productive model that "chronicles" "seasonality," "temporality," and "labor precariousness."
In this sense, he reproached that the recent General Budgets of Extremadura (PGEx) do not incorporate "new ideas" to reverse this situation and criticized that the percentage of spending allocated to employment policies remains at levels similar to previous years.
Regarding public employment, he denounced that the Junta "condemns" civil servants to be the "worst paid" in the State and assumes as normal that the salaries of Extremaduran workers are "among the lowest in Spain."
As he pointed out, this fact contrasts with the fact that the president of the Junta, María Guardiola, is among the "best paid" in the country and with the rejection of an initiative from Unidas por Extremadura to cut the remuneration of regional deputies by 10 percent.
In light of this situation, José Francisco Llera has argued that it is "urgent" for the Junta to strengthen active employment policies with the aim of improving employability, reducing the temporality and part-time nature of contracts, and has urged the regional Executive to "set an example" by ending temporality in the Administration and equating the remuneration of public employees.
Unemployment and contracts figures in July
Regarding the unemployment data for July, Llera has detailed that 59,768 people are still registered as job seekers in Extremadura, which is 767 fewer than in June, a drop of 1.27 percent.
He has also highlighted the formalization of 41,773 contracts during the month, of which 31,674 are temporary, a proportion that, in his opinion, evidences the "volatility" of the labor market in the region. At the same time, he has valued the increase in Social Security affiliates, with a rise of 1.52 percent in year-on-year terms, compared to the 2.09 percent recorded in the whole of the State.
Finally, he has lamented that the gender gap continues to be present in Extremadura, an element that, as he has warned, penalizes women "not only in the present but in the future of their pensions, which will be smaller."