7 ms·

Oh, beautiful Spain, playing experiments with an unemployment rate of 16.13%... I love how my country hugs the poverty closer and closer each year that passes

Oh, beautiful Spain, playing experiments with an unemployment rate of 16.13%... I love how my country hugs the poverty closer and closer each year that passes by.

ladyanita22 6y ago
Of course you will downvote me, but as an inhabitant of such country, the truth is, this is the result of the socialist and incompetent government that is in power due to the even more incompetent opposition. It's been long since we were the leaders of employment creation in the eurozone, back when Rajoy was in power.
- A12-B 6y ago
  It is a modest trial of a four day work week. You are so far from disaster. This can only be a good thing, if it doesn't work they stop doing it, but probably it will work because people are more productive when they have time to breath.
  - mercacona 6y ago
    Spaniards don’t appreciate research, we only nod when solutions sprout out of the blue. In fact, less work hours will be a complication for many -as they are used to justify the work done by sitting for extra-hours at their desk. It’s sad, but it’s also my daily routine.
- severino 6y ago
  > Of course you will downvote me... Maybe they're downvoting you because they are also Spanish, they know who Rajoy is and what he did, and what effects a pandemic produces on your economy regardless of the party in the government.
  - arcturus17 6y ago
    > regardless of the party in the government I certainly do not miss Rajoy, but I whole-heartedly believe that a social-communist government is possibly the worst alternative to get us out of this hole. We need jobs, a lot of them, not only in the public sector, and I think that our current government is tremendously ill-equipped for this task. Has anyone noticed how members of the government rarely, if ever, talk about job creation anymore? Politicians will lie about anything, but they don't even dare lie about this - they simply avoid these murky waters altogether. My theory is they know full-well that the only path to growth and private sector job creation is by taking measures (that moderates like Minister of the Economy Nadia Calviño possibly support) like modifying labor laws and lowering taxes which sound right-wing and therefore sit especially poorly with the communist wing of the government. The only alternative to that is, as some communists like Iglesias or Garzón are consistently pointing out, to nationalize a bunch of industries (they've talked about examples ranging from banks to media companies) and turn to a centralized economy. I hope I'm wrong but I clearly do not see how the situation will improve under the current circumstances.
    - Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
      Come on, the government is not "communist" in any practical sense of the word, anymore than the right is "fascist" as people in the left usually call it. Those words work well to inflame the masses and polarize political campaigns but not for serious political analysis. Sure, some individual members of the government (with very limited decision-making power, being the minority members of a coalition) declare themselves so. In an already very diluted way. And they do some political posturing with nationalizations (which aren't even a communist thing. If nationalizing a few strategic industries is communism, then what was Spain in the 80s with lots of nationalized industry? The USSR?). But it's not really going to happen. They know it, we know it. Macron has also set forth the idea of nationalizing some industries to face the COVID crisis, and I actually think it's more likely to happen in France (with its notoriously non-communist government) than in Spain.
      - arcturus17 6y ago
        > with very limited decision-making power, being the minority members of a coalition You seem to follow Spanish politics, so surely you must have seen how moderates like Calviño are often put in extremely rough spots? The communist wing of the government is not nearly as powerless as you claim to be. We'll see what comes out of labor reform, for example, but I suspect there won't be any measures that are conducive to the creation of good jobs, or any jobs at all.
- mordae 6y ago
  Check out Czechia. We have a communist party that supports a cabinet lead by a billionaire capitalist who literally sacrificed thousands of lives for better election results. You should get better opposition. Do you have a functioning Pirate party already? It seems dormant. Maybe try to revive it?
  - yiyus 6y ago
    I think the reason the Pirate party never got momentum in Spain is because they cannot compite in pirateness with the traditional parties.
sofixa 6y ago
Well, with a reduced work week, some jobs ( mostly service jobs that need to provide full coverage) would require more workers to cover the whole week, so i really don't see the issue here with regards to unemployment.
- fogihujy 6y ago
  Less working hours per person definitely means more workers are required in order to fill a given amount of work hours. I'm not sure it's viable in today's financial climate, but I guess we're about to find out.
  - sofixa 6y ago
    It's not necessarily less work per person, it's less time per person. That matters in cases where coverage is needed ( medical personnel, police, fire department, secretaries, phone support, hospitality, etc.) but in others where only the output matters ( like software engineering, lawyers, marketing, even factories in some cases etc. ), there have been multiple studies around the subject and they all claim that fewer work hours increase productivity.
    - teataster 6y ago
      While I wholeheartedly agree with you, I think we should be careful with this discourse. Rather than increases in productivity, increases in production should be emphasized. And yes, you cannot increase labor production without an increase in productivity, everything else equal. Iirc, increase in production is about 40%. So working Monday to Thursday, you produce the same as someone, working 5 days produces Monday to next week's Tuesday morning. Research is not solid, but promising.
    - fogihujy 6y ago
      You're right. It's time spent and not work performed. Original comment edited. However, in many professions being available for a given number of hours is often a major part of the job, and that means there will be a direct requirement to hire more people in order to cover the reduced working hours.
daptaq 6y ago
Aren't fewer workdays better for employment, because more people can be employed? I'm guessing it's more complicated, but is there some clear tendency?
- astrange 6y ago
  If you make the definition of fulltime worker 30 hours a week instead of 40 hours a week, it certainly does make more people fulltime employed, but it also seems like cheating. In the US underemployment was blamed on laziness, lack of training, etc etc for years but the actual cause is the Fed setting interest rates too high, and when they stopped we got more employment than ever (as of Jan 2020). If you simply make employers compete more to hire people, they will do a good job training them, making them more productive, ignoring minor criminal records and so on.
- fidelramos 6y ago
  Part of the complication if the enormous taxes and bureaucracy involved in companies hiring workers, it's a real pain for start-ups and smaller companies. I will give you one concrete example: companies in Spain with more than 50 workers must carry out salary audits to avoid gender discrimination [1]. These and other perverse incentives keep many companies from growing, which in turn hurt the economy and reduces demand for workers, driving wages down. [1] https://spainsnews.com/companies-with-more-than-50-workers-must-carry-out-salary-audits-to-avoid-the-gender-gap/ https://spainsnews.com/companies-with-more-than-50-workers-m...
  - ArkanExplorer 6y ago
    It starts earlier than that: payroll tax in Spain is 36%. If you're a micro-company, you can probably get away with paying each employee cash, or via B2B payments. Once you reach any reasonable scale, you have to formalise those contracts. This is a problem across the EU, apart from areas like the UK and Scandinavia which don't have payroll taxes (where interestingly tech seems to be flourishing).
- anm89 6y ago
  Yes, if you lower the bar for the definition of employment more people will fit the category. This doesn't fundamentally improve or worsen any problem. You are just redefining a term. The underlying reality hasn't changed.
tomcooks 6y ago
How else would you solve the unemployment problem? By giving more hours of work to those who already have a job?
- neilwilson 6y ago
  Increase the number of jobs. Everybody needs something to do with their day. And those you really need to be working a full week to produce what we really need will only do that if there is something material for them to exchange for their efforts. We really don't want farmers on three day weeks.
- fidelramos 6y ago
  Simple, remove or reduce all barriers to employment: - No minimum wage laws. - Reduce or remove taxes paid by companies. - Reduce or remove forced social contributions by companies on behalf of the workers. - Remove bureaucracy and taxes to start companies. - Facilitate capital investment by foreign firms. It's simple but not easy, because people vote for policies that sound good but are actually either ineffective or directly give the opposite result.
elktea 6y ago
Do you think this will reduce jobs? I think it would do the opposite
teataster 6y ago
You should check current research on work week reduction. It actually indicates workers increase weekly production. Yes, production, not productivity. There is this thing called stress, burnout... That decreases production. Less work usually means less stress. Research is not as solid as I would like, but promising.

Oh, beautiful Spain, playing experiments with an unemployment rate of 16.13%... I love how my country hugs the poverty closer and closer each year that passes by.

ladyanita22 6y ago

Of course you will downvote me, but as an inhabitant of such country, the truth is, this is the result of the socialist and incompetent government that is in power due to the even more incompetent opposition. It's been long since we were the leaders of employment creation in the eurozone, back when Rajoy was in power.

A12-B 6y ago
It is a modest trial of a four day work week. You are so far from disaster. This can only be a good thing, if it doesn't work they stop doing it, but probably it will work because people are more productive when they have time to breath.
- mercacona 6y ago
  Spaniards don’t appreciate research, we only nod when solutions sprout out of the blue. In fact, less work hours will be a complication for many -as they are used to justify the work done by sitting for extra-hours at their desk. It’s sad, but it’s also my daily routine.
severino 6y ago
> Of course you will downvote me... Maybe they're downvoting you because they are also Spanish, they know who Rajoy is and what he did, and what effects a pandemic produces on your economy regardless of the party in the government.
- arcturus17 6y ago
  > regardless of the party in the government I certainly do not miss Rajoy, but I whole-heartedly believe that a social-communist government is possibly the worst alternative to get us out of this hole. We need jobs, a lot of them, not only in the public sector, and I think that our current government is tremendously ill-equipped for this task. Has anyone noticed how members of the government rarely, if ever, talk about job creation anymore? Politicians will lie about anything, but they don't even dare lie about this - they simply avoid these murky waters altogether. My theory is they know full-well that the only path to growth and private sector job creation is by taking measures (that moderates like Minister of the Economy Nadia Calviño possibly support) like modifying labor laws and lowering taxes which sound right-wing and therefore sit especially poorly with the communist wing of the government. The only alternative to that is, as some communists like Iglesias or Garzón are consistently pointing out, to nationalize a bunch of industries (they've talked about examples ranging from banks to media companies) and turn to a centralized economy. I hope I'm wrong but I clearly do not see how the situation will improve under the current circumstances.
  - Al-Khwarizmi 6y ago
    Come on, the government is not "communist" in any practical sense of the word, anymore than the right is "fascist" as people in the left usually call it. Those words work well to inflame the masses and polarize political campaigns but not for serious political analysis. Sure, some individual members of the government (with very limited decision-making power, being the minority members of a coalition) declare themselves so. In an already very diluted way. And they do some political posturing with nationalizations (which aren't even a communist thing. If nationalizing a few strategic industries is communism, then what was Spain in the 80s with lots of nationalized industry? The USSR?). But it's not really going to happen. They know it, we know it. Macron has also set forth the idea of nationalizing some industries to face the COVID crisis, and I actually think it's more likely to happen in France (with its notoriously non-communist government) than in Spain.
    - arcturus17 6y ago
      > with very limited decision-making power, being the minority members of a coalition You seem to follow Spanish politics, so surely you must have seen how moderates like Calviño are often put in extremely rough spots? The communist wing of the government is not nearly as powerless as you claim to be. We'll see what comes out of labor reform, for example, but I suspect there won't be any measures that are conducive to the creation of good jobs, or any jobs at all.
mordae 6y ago
Check out Czechia. We have a communist party that supports a cabinet lead by a billionaire capitalist who literally sacrificed thousands of lives for better election results. You should get better opposition. Do you have a functioning Pirate party already? It seems dormant. Maybe try to revive it?
- yiyus 6y ago
  I think the reason the Pirate party never got momentum in Spain is because they cannot compite in pirateness with the traditional parties.

sofixa 6y ago

Well, with a reduced work week, some jobs ( mostly service jobs that need to provide full coverage) would require more workers to cover the whole week, so i really don't see the issue here with regards to unemployment.

fogihujy 6y ago
Less working hours per person definitely means more workers are required in order to fill a given amount of work hours. I'm not sure it's viable in today's financial climate, but I guess we're about to find out.
- sofixa 6y ago
  It's not necessarily less work per person, it's less time per person. That matters in cases where coverage is needed ( medical personnel, police, fire department, secretaries, phone support, hospitality, etc.) but in others where only the output matters ( like software engineering, lawyers, marketing, even factories in some cases etc. ), there have been multiple studies around the subject and they all claim that fewer work hours increase productivity.
  - teataster 6y ago
    While I wholeheartedly agree with you, I think we should be careful with this discourse. Rather than increases in productivity, increases in production should be emphasized. And yes, you cannot increase labor production without an increase in productivity, everything else equal. Iirc, increase in production is about 40%. So working Monday to Thursday, you produce the same as someone, working 5 days produces Monday to next week's Tuesday morning. Research is not solid, but promising.
  - fogihujy 6y ago
    You're right. It's time spent and not work performed. Original comment edited. However, in many professions being available for a given number of hours is often a major part of the job, and that means there will be a direct requirement to hire more people in order to cover the reduced working hours.

daptaq 6y ago

Aren't fewer workdays better for employment, because more people can be employed? I'm guessing it's more complicated, but is there some clear tendency?

astrange 6y ago
If you make the definition of fulltime worker 30 hours a week instead of 40 hours a week, it certainly does make more people fulltime employed, but it also seems like cheating. In the US underemployment was blamed on laziness, lack of training, etc etc for years but the actual cause is the Fed setting interest rates too high, and when they stopped we got more employment than ever (as of Jan 2020). If you simply make employers compete more to hire people, they will do a good job training them, making them more productive, ignoring minor criminal records and so on.
fidelramos 6y ago
Part of the complication if the enormous taxes and bureaucracy involved in companies hiring workers, it's a real pain for start-ups and smaller companies. I will give you one concrete example: companies in Spain with more than 50 workers must carry out salary audits to avoid gender discrimination [1]. These and other perverse incentives keep many companies from growing, which in turn hurt the economy and reduces demand for workers, driving wages down. [1] https://spainsnews.com/companies-with-more-than-50-workers-must-carry-out-salary-audits-to-avoid-the-gender-gap/ https://spainsnews.com/companies-with-more-than-50-workers-m...
- ArkanExplorer 6y ago
  It starts earlier than that: payroll tax in Spain is 36%. If you're a micro-company, you can probably get away with paying each employee cash, or via B2B payments. Once you reach any reasonable scale, you have to formalise those contracts. This is a problem across the EU, apart from areas like the UK and Scandinavia which don't have payroll taxes (where interestingly tech seems to be flourishing).
anm89 6y ago
Yes, if you lower the bar for the definition of employment more people will fit the category. This doesn't fundamentally improve or worsen any problem. You are just redefining a term. The underlying reality hasn't changed.

tomcooks 6y ago

How else would you solve the unemployment problem? By giving more hours of work to those who already have a job?

neilwilson 6y ago
Increase the number of jobs. Everybody needs something to do with their day. And those you really need to be working a full week to produce what we really need will only do that if there is something material for them to exchange for their efforts. We really don't want farmers on three day weeks.
fidelramos 6y ago
Simple, remove or reduce all barriers to employment: - No minimum wage laws. - Reduce or remove taxes paid by companies. - Reduce or remove forced social contributions by companies on behalf of the workers. - Remove bureaucracy and taxes to start companies. - Facilitate capital investment by foreign firms. It's simple but not easy, because people vote for policies that sound good but are actually either ineffective or directly give the opposite result.

elktea 6y ago

Do you think this will reduce jobs? I think it would do the opposite

teataster 6y ago

You should check current research on work week reduction. It actually indicates workers increase weekly production. Yes, production, not productivity. There is this thing called stress, burnout... That decreases production. Less work usually means less stress. Research is not as solid as I would like, but promising.