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Half of Spain's job ads pay less than €1K/month

Steve Tallantyre
Steve Tallantyre - [email protected]
Half of Spain's job ads pay less than €1K/month
Spanish wages have fallen sharply in the last 2 years and the trend shows no sign of slowing. Photo: LEON NEAL / AFP

The so-called 'mileurismo' phenomenon continues to grow as data from employment portal jobandtalent.com reveals that 49 per cent of jobs offered in Spain in January had net salaries equivalent to less than €1,000 ($1,350) per month.

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Information published in the company's blog showed that jobs in the 'mileurismo' category – those that pay less than €1,000 a month – had risen from 30 per cent  to 49 per cent of those on offer.

Of those, positions offering gross annual salaries of under €15,000 rose from 20 per cent to 31 per cent of the total, and jobs offering €16,000 to €20,000  from 6 per cent to 18 per cent.

The blog presented the figures as a complement to data released this week by the Juan Alfaro Club of Excellence's Labour Reform Monitor which showed that average wages across Spain had fallen by 10% since the introduction of new legislation designed to introduce flexibility into the job market.

Average wages in Spain are believed to have fallen 20% in total over the last 24 months.

Spain's Minister for Tax and Public Administration, Cristóbal Montoro, however, said last year that wages weren't falling but were instead "moderating their growth".

But Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy admitted that wages were going down in December when he told reporters: "In difficult situations, it is better to bet on earning a little bit less and maintain as many jobs as possible."

Spanish daily La Información collated statements from a number of sources, all of which seemed to support the claim that wages in Spain are continuing to drop.

The IMF recently called for further wage cuts to improve Spanish competitiveness.

Human Resources agency PeopleMatters said that 25% of businesses they had contacted had plans to lower wages in 2014 regardless of economic circumstances, while the Spanish Federation of Business Organizations (CEOE) recommended that wages should be frozen or, at most, raised by 0.6 per cent.

The average monthly in Spain of €1,615 per month is already below the EU average of €1,916, according to last year's Adecco Monitor of Employment Opportunity and Satisfaction, and far from the averages in Germany (€2,421), the UK (€2,321) and France (€2,130).

Only 30 per cent of Spanish jobs offer wages equivalent to the EU average, and only 7 per cent offer wages equivalent to those found in Europe's top economies.

Jobsandtalent indicated that job offers are increasingly clustering around the major hubs of Barcelona and Madrid; almost 41 per cent of jobs offered in Spain are in the two cities.

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