Economic slow-down and Covid-19: the two factors that marked the job market in 2020

The economic slow-down and the onset of Covid-19: the two main factors that marked 2020 and affected its job market statistics. This is the main conclusion reached by InfoJobs Spain’s No.1 employment platform, who presented the Informe InfoJobs-Esade 2020 Estado del Mercado Laboral en España, this morning about Spain’s job market with findings based on company business and applicants.

Last year, InfoJobs recorded a total of 1,530,120 vacancies in Spain. Although this figure is a far cry from the 2,825,863 vacancies advertised in 2019, i.e. a drop of 46%, it confirms that the job market, despite extremely adverse circumstances, did not grind to a halt. The number of vacancies was, in fact, quite similar to figures for 2014 and 2015, and almost 50% higher than in 2010-13 at the peak of the previous economic crisis. 

“The Covid-19 lockdown and subsequent safeguards and the ensuing economic slowdown resulted in the loss of some 620,000 jobs last year”, said Anna Ginés, professor at Esade Law School and head of the Esade Institute of Labour Studies. “The recovery of the job market is expected to be closely linked to vaccination roll-out, the evolution of sectors such as tourism hit hard by the pandemic, the distribution of EU funds, and the pro-active employment policies and necessary structural reforms that may be implemented”, explained Ginés.

“Open-ended contracts, the hallmark of InfoJobs”

Thirty-three percent (489,555) of all these vacancies involved temporary contacts and 25% (368,708), open-ended contracts. These are the two main types of vacancies on the InfoJobs website and together they account for almost six out of every ten jobs advertised (58% to be precise), a percentage that has hardly varied in recent years (60% in 2019 and 63% in 2018). Either way, the number of fixed-term contracts fell by 39%, whilst open-ended contracts were 51% fewer than in 2019.

“Statistics about first jobs published by SEPE (Spain’s public employment service) and vacancy figures published by IJ reveal similar trends in both areas. As a result, InfoJobs is a good indicator of Spain’s job market whose reliability has not been affected by the exceptional circumstances caused by the coronavirus”, said Román Campa, director general of InfoJobs. “However, whereas open-ended contracts accounted for 25% to 30% of vacancies on InfoJobs in 2020, the figure on the job market as a whole remained around 5% to 6%. We can, therefore, say that this sort of contract is the hallmark of our platform”.

The acceleration of digital change: a driving force for the ITC sector

For yet another year, the commerce and sales sector garnered the largest number of InfoJobs vacancies, accounting for 20% of the total compared to 17% in 2019. The next four sectors with the most vacancies were ICT (164,539), purchasing, logistics and warehousing (163,436), customer service (162,801) and professions, arts and trades (129,485).

The five categories with the most vacancies have remained unchanged since 2018, but last year ITC (11% of vacancies in 2020 up from 10% in 2019) has moved up from fourth place in 2019 to second place, showing more resilience to the crisis than other categories. The stability of this sector in terms of Infojobs vacancies is confirmed by the fact that it has ranked amongst the five sectors with the most vacancies for ten years.

In the IT sector, some jobs are particularly noteworthy. Software developers, to be precise, are the most sought after (34%). The jobs with next highest number of vacancies are software analyst (7%) followed by ICT helpdesk agent (6%). The importance of helpdesk agents is also related to the pandemic because these are the professionals who provide support and handle computing for corporate staff and are, therefore, the ones solving the problems of the many employees who left the office and started working from home in 2020.

The pandemic interrupted a six-year upwards trend in tourism and hospitality

As was to be expected, tourism and hospitality was the sector with the biggest decline in year-on-year figures, with a 76% drop in vacancies compared to 2019. The pandemic halted a six-year climb that had seen a six-fold increase in tourism and hospitality vacancies published on InfoJobs from 2015 to 2019.

There is, however, no doubt that the pandemic and the lockdowns designed to contain the virus slowed down almost all sectors of the economy in 2020. The biggest reductions in absolute terms occurred, naturally enough, in categories that already had a considerable number of vacancies, such as commerce and sales, purchases, logistics and warehousing, and tourism and hospitality, all of which suffered year-on-year reductions of more than 160,000 vacancies.

In this respect, tourism and hospitality was the sector hit hardest in relative terms: 215,250 vacancies were published in 2019 compared with 52,740 in 2020, i.e. a reduction of 76%. Lockdowns also hit retail hard (55% fewer vacancies in 2020 than in 2019) due to all but essential shops being closed during the spring and shopping centres in some parts of Spain being closed occasionally during subsequent upsurges in the pandemic, not to mention the loss of purchasing power and consumers’ concerns about their own financial circumstances.

Healthcare and health. The great exception

The only sector that grew 2020 in comparison to the previous year was health and healthcare, up 26% over 2019, with almost 77,000 vacancies published. This is closely linked to the on-going pandemic due to the essential role of the health industry.

One of the subsectors in this category that stands out clearly is nursing. Last year, InfoJobs published a total of 32,455 vacancies in this field, followed by other health professionals (28,844) and dentists (5,197). In terms of vacancies on InfoJobs, nurses occupied the No. 1 spot with 33% of vacancies, followed by nursing assistants (20%). On the other hand, care homes for the elderly have been and still are one of the main causes for concern during the crisis, as shown by the ranking of jobs with the most vacancies in this sector.

Boom in e-commerce alleviates the impact on purchases, logistics and warehousing

The number of vacancies advertised on InfoJobs in this sector had increased considerably in recent years but in 2020, due to the pandemic, the number of jobs advertised in this category was half that of 2019, falling to 163,500 vacancies. But in comparison with earlier trends, the evolution of this sector was one of the best in recent years, i.e. it continues to account for one in every ten vacancies published, five percentage points higher than just three years ago. In this respect, the boom in e-commerce and consequently the courier and home delivery sector in general (food, online shopping, etc), have pushed this category higher in the ranking.

Telemarketing, sales reps and delivery van drivers: the jobs with the most vacancies

Finally, as regards the most sought-after jobs in 2020, the highest ranking area is telemarketing with a total of 213,270 vacancies, followed by sales reps (130,989) and delivery van drivers (70,461). The top ten jobs with the most vacancies also include nurses, a job in the only sector with more vacancies than in 2019.

Gap between job-hunters’ skills and market requirements

Up to 3,523,927 persons applied for vacancies on InfoJobs in 2020, 2% fewer than the 3,584,079 who applied in 2019, although the number of applicants has remained high throughout the decade.

As regards the academic background of applicants, 36% were university graduates, 27% had vocational training and 17% had basic schooling. These are the three main groups. It must be said that only 15% of the vacancies published last year specified a university education, a considerable gap affecting this group of aplicants.

“This gap is due to a mismatch between job requirements and university graduates’ skills. The answer is to re-focus Spain’s productive framework towards high added-value activities, with particular emphasis on industry and up-and-coming online sectors, that enable the potential of human resources with higher education to be developed”, said Mónica Pérez, head of communication at InfoJobs. “In this instance, two facets of training must be highlighted: on the one hand, training must be suitable for the jobs in technical and technological fields that the market still requires; and, on the other, applicants and companies must commit to life-long training in hard and soft skills, always with a view to achieving the personal and career goals set out.”

Computing and telecommunications. The sector with the least competition and highest wages

Health and healthcare is the sector with the biggest increase in the number of applicants per job: up from 49 in 2019 to 50 in 2020. Hence, whilst vacancies have increased by 26%, numbers of applicants have climbed by 29%.

With 22 applicants for each job advertised, for yet another year the ICT sector has the least competition. This feature is a hallmark of this category. The impact of the pandemic and the ensuing decline in vacancies have, therefore, left their mark on the ICT sector but it continues to have an enviable applicant/job ratio. In addition, the vacancies in this sector have the highest average gross wage: €32,080 per annum, i.e. 4% higher than in 2019.

Finally, education and training is the sector with the second best applicant/job ratio (30 applicants per job in 2020, up from 21 in 2019), and the second lowest year-on-year increase.

Increase in average gross wage of vacancies published in InfoJobs

The average, annual gross wage of jobs advertised on InfoJobs in 2020 was €25,173, up 4.9% compared to €24,003 in 2019. This increase in purchasing power, like the increase in 2019 (1.4%), is a sea change compared with the three previous years when more jobs were created but with moderate wage increases that did not keep pace with inflation. This tendency is closely linked to the increase in the minimum wage in 2019 (an increase of 22.3%).

Taking into account this variable, and as mentioned earlier, ITC vacancies have the highest average gross salary. At the other end of the spectrum, professions, arts and trades have an average salary of €16,141, a 20% drop compared to 2019. The reason for this decrease is due to the fact that during the pandemic, there was an increase particularly in the number of jobs in cleaning, hygiene and disinfection tasks which usually have lower wages.

Madrid, Basque Country, Navarre and Catalonia: the only regions where wages are higher than Spain’s average, gross wage

Vacancies in the Region of Madrid had the highest average wage: €27,316 per annum before tax, followed by the Basque Country (€25,865), Navarre (€25,604) and Catalonia (€25,252). These are the only four regions that outstrip the Spanish average of €25,173, and are the ones that have traditionally commanded the highest wages in InfoJobs. However, as a result of unequal increases in recent years the Basque Country and Navarre have moved ahead of Catalonia, which was in second place just three years ago.

The Region of Madrid with 415,863 vacancies and Catalonia with 335,465, are the autonomous regions that published the most vacancies in 2020, accounting for 27% and 22% of total vacancies respectively. These two regions were followed, in a second group, by Andalusia with 165,795 vacancies (11% of the total) and the Region of Valencia with 134,523 vacancies (9%).

Vacancies were down in every region compared with 2019. The hardest hit region was the Balearic Islands, down 66%, followed by the Basque Country (-57%) and Madrid (-54%).