Government job cuts not as serious as people think

The public sector has not cut as many jobs as the government says. A recent Survey of the Active Population shows that government job cuts accounted for only 2.5% of all jobs that were lost during the crisis.

According to the Survey, 136,400 jobs were cut in the public sector between 2007 and 2013. If official figures indicate that this number is higher, it's because they include many temporary worker releases, which were never part of permanent payrolls anyway. It's undeniable that the efforts that the private sector has made have been a great success, but public sector cuts have been less so on a per layoff basis. The most worrisome issue is that the national, regional and local governments think they have finished their cutbacks when indicators suggest that their work is far from complete. Unfortunately, electoral politics are increasingly more important than streamlining and old an inefficient government. Politicians are turning deaf ears to warnings from the OCDE and the IMF, who say that modernizing now is critical given the fragile nature of the recovery and debt levels remain high. It is not certain whether Spain's public sector is smaller or larger than those in surrounding European nations.

Government jobs make up 13.1% of the labor force in this country compared to 10.6% in Germany. These figures indicate that actual government job cuts have been minimal. The heart of the matter has not been addressed: efficiency. To be more competitive, Spain needs a labor force that aspires to more than a stodgy bureaucracy. But nobody is talking like that now.