SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, March 30. (EUROPE PRESS) –
The Government of the Canary Islands reports this Wednesday that the Canary Islands Special Zone (ZEC) registered last year the highest absolute number of jobs created in a year, with a total of 1,139 new jobs, which represents an increase of 15, 5% compared to the previous year, that of 2020.
Thus, it is the highest historical growth despite the fact that during 2021 the effects of the pandemic continued, especially in the tourism and services sector on the islands.
However, the data shows that the average employment per company registered in the ZEC grew in 2021 from 10.58 to 11.48%, which implies an increase of 8.6 percentage points between one variable and another, from 2020 to 2021, details the Executive in a note.
This evolution shows that the companies that avail themselves of the tax advantages of the Special Zone present increasingly solid projects, of higher quality, more labor-intensive and, in turn, generators of more lasting and stable jobs.
In the records by subsectors and in the 2020-2021 comparison, the 60% increase in jobs generated in the field of fishing and aquaculture and the 20% increase in jobs created in audiovisual production stand out, which translates into a total of 80 more jobs.
In this field, the Government emphasizes that these are jobs from a well-established productive activity in the Canary Islands, beyond the filming derived from the tax differential, since these jobs are generated by companies with a permanent stay in the archipelago.
Another area experiencing improvement is computer programming, which registered an increase of 215 jobs at the end of last year compared to 2020, which is completed with other annual increases: 55 in engineering and 46 in research and development activities ( R&D). In the latter case, the improvement is 166% compared to the previous year.
Likewise, sports activities generated 40 jobs in 2021, which confirms that the business projects that generate the most work in the ZEC are linked to the greatest added value.
“This is very relevant,” the Government specifies, because these same areas foster a multiplier effect on the island’s economy, which in turn benefits other subsectors and makes it possible to retain talent originating in the archipelago’s educational system.
The average growth in employment per registered entity in 2021 was 8.5%, a figure that contrasts with the decrease experienced in 2020, with 2.1% less, and in 2019, with 1.5% less.
Until those exercises, the increases were the usual trend: 5% in 2015, 5.03% in 2016, 7.45% in 2017 and 8.54% in 2018.
