Almost two million Basque citizens are called to the polls this Sunday. The new Lehendakari will start with positive data in terms of employment, with an unemployment rate standing at 6.3% and with a level of employed people that exceeds one million, according to the Active Population Survey for the last quarter of 2023. However, It will also have the challenge of launching a reform of Lanbide, the Basque public employment service, since, as is the case in the rest of the territories, these offices are not being able to cover the needs of companies and the unemployed. At the same time, he will have to lead the negotiations with the central government for the transfer of the economic management of Social Security, agreed between PSOE and PNV.
While the Government of Pedro Sánchez has set the challenge of reaching an unemployment rate of 8% by the end of the legislature (2027), the Basque Country is ahead in this task and has remained at that threshold or even below since Late 2021, just before the labor reform came into force and when the economy began to recover after the coronavirus crisis. This territory has historically been the one with the fewest unemployed people registered in its offices, even in the worst of the financial crisis, due to the weight that the industry has in this region; Although Euskadi shares the problem of youth unemployment with the rest of Spain, given that in the case of those under 25 it is close to 20% and in the case of young women under 20 it reaches 60%.
This autonomous community also has a unique distribution of workers between different economic activities, as reflected in the INE survey. The largest group is that of the public sector, which includes administration personnel, health services and the educational sector, which was close to 275,000 people employed at the end of 2023. This is followed by the commerce, transport and hospitality sector. . (226,500 workers) and most significantly, more than 200,000 professionals who carry out some work in the industry, to which another comparable figure from the manufacturing industry should be added (190,800 employed). On the other hand, this translates into a lower weight of the information and communications sector, the one that has created the most employment nationwide since the pandemic (40,000 workers).
Basque workers are also well paid, in general terms, with an average contribution base of 2,526 euros, although this reference has a downward bias because the part of the salary that exceeds 4,720.5 euros is exempt from this quote. This feature also translates into the highest retirement pensions in the entire Spanish territory, with an average amount of 1,758.96 euros in the month of March, according to statistics published by the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration. The next Lehendakari may also have to assume the management of these payrolls, given that the transfer has been pending for decades and the formations that both executives now occupy have taken steps to advance it without breaking the ‘single fund’ of Social Security. .
This is an issue included in the Statute of Gernika and a historical demand of the Basque nationalist parties, the PNV included it among the demands to give its support to the investiture of Pedro Sánchez in 2020 and later, the then Minister of Territorial Policy fi created a calendar with the Basque Government in which they agreed to study the transfer of the economic management of Social Security in 2021. This program remained a dead letter with the arrival of the pandemic, so it flourished again in the pacts after the general elections this summer, where PNV and PSOE agreed to finalize the transfer of all pending powers within a maximum period of two years, that is, before November 2025.
The Basque Country already manages one of the aid created by this ministry, the Minimum Living Income, designed within the framework of the pandemic to serve people who were in a situation of exclusion or at risk of being so and did not have income. The Constitutional Court has endorsed this step on two occasions, understanding that it does not pose any risk to the ‘single fund’ since the territories have to apply the state standard and because the regional regime allows them to assume the payment of the payroll to deduct it later. of the quota and contribute the imports derived from the economic agreement signed with the State. In addition, all the territories of the common regime can assume its management from December thanks to a regulatory modification.
