The Valencian Community will recover employment more intensively in the next two years after the impact of the coronavirus pandemic. The most conservative forecast, in fact, points to 118,000 jobs between 2022 and 2023, which could be more if the tourism sector recovers faster than expected, according to the ManpowerGroup Index.
After the 2.1% increase experienced in 2021, occupancy is expected to grow at a rate of 3.2% in 2022, in line with the Spanish average, and 2.4% in 2023, three tenths above the set of Spain.
This was explained by the general director of ManpowerGroup, Enrique Rodríguez, and its regional manager, María José Cortina, during the presentation of the study, focused on the Eastern area (Comunitat Valenciana, Murcia, Baleares and Cataluña) and prepared by the professor emeritus of Applied Economics of the Autonomous University of Barcelona, Josep Oliver.
The forecasts do not contemplate the impact of the war in Ukraine, since the report was prepared beforehand, but the firm considers that if the conflict does not go on forever, the figures may be maintained, as it is a conservative forecast.
According to the report, the Valencian economy should create around 118,000 jobs between 2022 and 2023. Of the total, 66,000 new jobs are planned for 2022, which will allow the Region to reach 2.1 million employed this year. In this way, it will not only have reabsorbed the employment that was destroyed in 2020, but it will be around 39,000 above the level prior to the crisis.
The Valencian Community would contribute 11% of the new employment that is expected for the whole of Spain in these next two years, a weight similar to that contributed since the beginning of the recovery in 2013. However, the community will reach 2023 still with a 2.4% fewer jobs than in 2007, the year with its highest record.
By sectors, employment is expected to grow more intensely in construction, with growth of 4.5% and 4.7% for 2022 and 2023, respectively, and some 12,000 new jobs. It will also do so in industry, with increases of 3.5% and 2.9%, which will generate nearly 23,000 jobs. For its part, the services sector will experience more moderate increases, with 3.0% in 2022 and 2.2% in 2023.
The result should translate into more than 79,000 new employees in the sector, a figure that represents 68% of employment that will be created in this period.
By specific sectors, and in the case of the Community, ManpowerGroup sees potential to create more jobs in food, logistics (due to the rise of ecommerce) and hospitality, although it depends on the recovery of foreign tourism. Also, in construction and the automotive industry, closely linked to Almussafes and the Sagunt gigafactory.
As for the most demanded profiles for these sectors, they point to operators with qualification and command of languages. In this sense, the professions with the most opportunities would be all those related to the logistics chain (from management to distribution), trades (welder, carpenter, plumber, etc), and the eternal technological profile.
The CEO of ManpowerGroup pointed out during his speech that there is “a mismatch between the needs of companies and the talent available” in two very specific profiles, that of languages and that of information technology. “There is a paradox that for certain positions there is a high unemployment rate and for others, there is a lack of talent to the point of blocking the growth of companies,” Rodríguez said. Thus, the firm opted to carry out actions to match supply and demand in these positions.
On the other hand, the quarterly ManpowerGroup Employment Projection study, which includes employers’ hiring intentions for the second quarter of the year, points out that all Spanish regions show setbacks compared to the previous quarter. Levante (which in this report includes the Valencian Community and Murcia) lost 9 points compared to the first quarter of the year, but once again led expectations with a net employment projection of +32%.
In any case, in relation to the second quarter of 2021 there is an improvement of 36 percentage points. In addition, in the Eastern zone, 50% of employers plan to increase their teams, 31% maintain them and only 16% reduce them.
