Agriculture generated a total of 7,766 contracts in the Canary Islands during the first half of the year, which is 13.4% more than the same period of the previous year, according to the data analyzed by the human resources company Randstad. The reactivation of the labor market in the island countryside did not occur symmetrically between the two provinces. While in Santa Cruz de Tenerife it grew by 30.5%, in Las Palmas it fell by 9.1%.
The dependence on tourism that the eastern province has is greater than that of its sister. Logically, the reactivation of the accommodation plant and its approach to pre-pandemic levels takes labor away from agriculture. In any case, provincial differences aside, the threat of a crisis and recessions themselves bring workers back to the land, and in this context, the Archipelago and Euskadi were the two autonomous communities that have taken the lead.
So much so that In Spain as a whole, the sector signed 14.5% fewer contracts –a total of 1.2 million– between January and June than in the first half of last year. Of course, while in 2021 only 4.3% of initialed employment relationships were indefinite, now 25.8% reach that condition.
Indefinite labor relations go from 4.3% to 25.8% after the reform of the legislation
Theo Hernando, Secretary General of Asaga Canarias, He pointed out that in previous years employment “was more or less stabilized.” However, “it always happens that in times of crisis the agricultural sector is a refuge, many people return to the countryside.”
first moves
It is the logical consequence of remaining unemployed for several months. With one peculiarity, although historically it has happened as Hernando points out, in the current case the recession is still only a threat. In fact, the labor market of the Islands registers record numbers of Social Security affiliates. However, there are already those who go ahead and take care of “family or friends’ farms,” said Asaga’s secretary general.
On the fall in the country as a wholethe director of Randstad Research, Valentín Bote, He explained that it is determined by “the labor reform.” In other words, in his opinion, it is the “indefinite contracting that the new regulations have introduced” that is responsible for the fact that fewer contracts have been signed in Spain. Reviewing the historical series of the last ten years is enough to verify that the reduction “in the total volume of firms” compared to the first half of 2021 is a common trend in the sector.
After two years, 2012 and 2013, in which this indicator remained just above 840,000 headings, the volume exceeded 1.2 million in 2014, 1.5 in 2017, and 1.6 in 2019. With the outbreak of the pandemic, the number of contracts fluctuated between 1.4 million contracts in the last two years, to fall to the current 1.2 million signatures.
In absolute terms, Andalusia was, by far, the autonomous community with the highest volume of contracting in agriculture, with 666,309 signatures, which represents 53.4% of the total signed in the country.
