Contracts lasting less than a week showed a notable drop in the first two months of summer, June and July. There were 659,435 very short-term employment contracts, down from 804,999 in the same period last year.
Data from the State Public Employment Agency’s contract statistics indicate that 301,038 contracts were signed in July, compared with 396,009 in the same month last year, before the job reform took full effect. These were contracts that did not last a week, reflecting a 24% decrease.
For June, 358,397 contracts lasting under seven days were recorded this year, a 12.3% decrease from 408,990 in June 2021.
This decline in very short-term contracts aligns with measures from the labor reform that began in January. The reform limited the use and forms of temporary contracts while introducing penalties, including an extra contribution to Social Security for short-term agreements.
The Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security noted during the July employment data presentation that the labor market reform has sharpened the quality of employment. Temporary hires continued to fall sharply, even in a month like July, when employment typically rises and temporary hiring is historically high.
Consequently, the downturn in temporary hires in June and July saw a level of uncertainty in contract records, with around 1.5 million contracts of this type occurring during these months, driven largely by very short-term agreements.
In more detail, 783,595 employment contracts of an uncertain nature were signed in July, while 685,992 fixed contracts were registered in the same month. These figures imply that nearly half of the contracts signed in these months were uncertain, a substantial shift from the 10% represented before the labor reform came into effect.
Indefinite contracts in accommodation
The figures also include discontinuous contracts across industries such as hospitality and farming, which tend to surge during peak season—especially in the summer months.
In total, 534,269 contracts of this discontinuous form were signed in Spain over these two months, with 241,590 in July and 292,679 in June.
Analysis by sector shows that within the uncertain category, the presence of these discontinuous permanent contracts and the hotel sector highlights where stability is most evident. In July, 307,015 contracts were in stable form, while 160,581 were uncertain, a number that, compared to July of the previous year, expanded dramatically—ninefold—and accounted for roughly 8% of the sector total.
Of the 337,290 contracts signed in accommodation in July 2021, only 19,349 were initially uncertain, and 7,699 were converted through other methods, while the rest were temporary.
The June figures for this activity follow the same pattern: more than half of the 350,393 contracts signed, 184,916, were permanent or converted from another form to this modality.
The labor reform was cited by unions as maintaining high participation of uncertain modalities during the summer. The leadership of both major unions commented that the indefinite contract is already a reference method for recruitment, contrasting with temporary contracts.
A representative from the union movement emphasized that the indefinite contract has become a standard approach for stable recruitment, signaling a shift away from a heavy reliance on temporary arrangements.