Meyling (36 years), Mariángels (34 years old) and Esther (42 years) have something in common: effort to work and get their children forward. However, they also coincide in something else: despite the monthly salary and the effort, they do not reach the end of the month. “I don’t arrive, I don’t know how I do, but … little by little,” Mariángeles says. They are not the only ones. According to the latest report, Accounts that do not come out. Radiography of labor poverty in the homes of Spainpublished on Wednesday, 17.1% of Spanish families with children in which at least one parent works lives in a situation of labor poverty; That is, they fail to generate sufficient income to overcome the poverty threshold.
Mariángels and Esther are single mothers and have one and three children, respectively. Meyling lives with her husband and has a child. Each one faces a different problem since labor poverty varies depending on the type of home. In single -parent families, the figure increases to 32% and in the numerous to 35.5%. The national average for the entire population is 11.7%.
The report argues that having a job in Spain does not guarantee to obtain the basics to live. Catalina Perazzo, director of Social and Political Incidence of Save The Children, explains: “We see that it worsens it. We see in the day to day is not enough.”
To prepare the report – the first that the organization on labor poverty – analyzed the official data of the Living Conditions Survey (ECV) carried out by the National Statistics Institute and the continuous sample of Labor Lives (MCVL) of Social Security, with the aim of crossing the data on poverty and employment. In addition, they interviewed eight families to learn about their cases.
Meyling Janelys Cruz Aguinaga arrived in Spain with her 11 -year -old son a little over a year ago since Nicaragua, her husband had migrated months before. The first to get a job was him, but maintaining a family of three with the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI) was almost impossible, the woman tells El País. “We could not buy clothes or footwear we needed, for food we bought less and the basics,” he says. Then, she got a job for hours, with which she added 160 euros a month: “It was not much, but it was something to eat,” he recalls.
In homes composed of two adults, where only one works, and 38% when there are two. For two months, both have a fixed job in Bilbao, she got it in a bakery after much effort and absolute availability. He is lucky that his partner has work flexibility to take care of his son, otherwise “he could not have the job because there is no conciliation.” Maybe I would be unemployed looking for a position for hours. ”
Perazzo explains that if in a family the two parents receive the SMI, the situation “is quite covered. With a” highlights. According to the report, the monthly poverty threshold in 2023 for two adults and two minors were 2,027 euros and for single -parent families, 965 euros. The SMI is currently 1,184 euros.
The impossibility of working all the desired time due to partial days or discontinuity is the main cause for this context of “growing precarization,” says the NGO. Also short -term jobs and low wages per hour. In addition, there are few guarantees for parents to get income, absence of specific policies and benefits for families and parenting.
Mariángels, a Spanish who lives in Andalusia, works 25 hours per week and earns 650 euros net, plus the help of minimum vital income. It tells Save The Children his situation: “What I hope is to have a full day, because I win it, every time they need me, I am at the foot of the cannon.”
Single women and migrants, more vulnerable families
For Perazzo, if all vulnerabilities come together in a profile would be a single and foreign extra -community mother. The report highlights that work poverty in families cannot be separated from the feminization of poverty: “They have to look for a way to meet the conciliation needs that, being alone, is a greater effort,” says the specialist. And he adds: “It has to do with structural inequalities of gender: access to employment, salary gap, greater economic vulnerability.”
In Spain, there are 806,400 men who work part -time and the figure rises to more than 2,250,000. Of these, almost 400,000 women indicate care as a reason for this type of work, compared to 30,000 men in the same situation.
That is the case of Esther who is from Equatorial Guinea and lives in Madrid with her three children of 18, 16 and 6 years. “There are months that you feel drowned,” he tells the NGO. She has been working as a supervisor in a hotel for more than a year: “I depend on me and my work, so I almost always look drowned and I do not get to the end of the month. I have difficulties with the hours of work and the need to run for children for children,” he says. Esther is currently looking for a floor to be more comfortable, because now he shares a house with other relatives.
For autonomies, the highest labor poverty is found in Andalusia (24.6%), Castilla-La Mancha (24.2%) and Murcia (22.4%). On the contrary, communities with lower rates are Galicia (8.2%) and the Basque Country (9.3%).
As for the characteristics of the work, self -employment is associated with a greater probability of being in poverty. However, it is one of the options preferred by families, especially for flexibility reasons. The activity sector also influences the rate of poverty, agriculture, livestock, forestry and fishing have the greatest risk, while financial and insurance activities that the least.
