Sepe is the state employment service. It reports that almost half of the employment contracts issued in the Balearics between June and August were for no longer than three months. There were 156,098 contracts, and 75,076 (48%) were short term for three months or less.
Ana Landero of the UGT union says that this figure emphasises the high level of job turnover in the labour market. She adds that between January and August there were 50,693 casual contracts for only a week's work; these represented almost 16% of the hiring over the eight months.
The short-term nature of the contracts is explained by employer needs, be these for construction or for service jobs. Landero notes that this short-term working is at much the same sort of level that it was in 2007 before the economic crisis took hold. There were 120,107 contracts between June and August in that year; 46% of them were for three months or less.
By contrast, the number of permanent employment contracts has gone up. Over the June to August period this year there were 25,037 such contracts, twice as many as in 2007. Temporary contracts of longer duration, typically six months, have also increased: 130,313 this year against 106,201 in 2007, a difference of 23%.
The rise in permanent contracts is largely due to there being more "fjio discontinuo" working. In August this year, a record number of employees with this type of contract were registered with social security - 90,000, and these were virtually double the number eleven years ago.