The Spanish government is set to approve the largest public employment offer in history at the Council of Ministers on Tuesday. This move comes after years of calls by the current administration for more civil service positions, with a total of over 40,000 seats available.
Pedro Sánchez’s Executive has been pushing for significant increases in public employment since 2018, with over 220,000 positions announced so far. In previous years, the socialist government offered 23,156 positions in 2018 and over 29,000 positions in 2019. However, there was a slight slowdown in 2020 before numbers rebounded significantly, leading to the upcoming offer of 40,121 available positions.
Minister for Digital Transformation and the Civil Service José Luis Escrivá has emphasized the importance of public employment in Spain’s labor market and highlighted the need to increase its percentage. This focus on public employment marks a departure from previous administrations such as Mariano Rajoy’s which saw fewer job offers during their tenure.
While unions like UGT have approved the offer, others like CSIF have criticized it for reducing net job creation and potentially hindering staff renewal. Despite this criticism, the government has also recently decided to increase civil servants’ salaries by 2%, with an additional 0.5% based on inflation. Unions hope to secure further salary increases for public employees to maintain their purchasing power as negotiations continue.
