Easter hiring has once again saved jobs this spring, . The week took place this year between March 29 and April 5, placing the main days of this festival in the last month. This has facilitated a gain of 223,685 Social Security affiliations in April and the decrease in this same month of 62,668 unemployed people registered in the offices of the public employment service (SEPE), with a special pull from the hospitality industry and commerce. With this boost, according to figures published this Tuesday by the Ministries of Social Security and Labor, the number of contributors exceeds 22 million for the first time (it has stood at 22.1 million), while the total number of unemployed decreases to 2,357,044, falling from 2.4 million unemployed for the first time in almost 18 years, since June 2008.
The behavior of the labor market in April was preceded by , since never before in that month had so many contributors been gained in the historical series (211,510 new affiliates compared to February). This good data – which was already marked by the hiring ahead of the first part of the Easter campaign – occurred despite the fact that the impact of the war in Iran had already begun to be felt in prices and, above all, had already generated strong geopolitical and economic uncertainty.
However, the good employment performance sponsored by the start of Holy Week in March was not enough to offset the official job creation figures for the entire first quarter, which is measured by the Active Population Survey (EPA), and which was reflected a week ago. Specifically, the unemployment rate rose nine tenths compared to the last quarter of 2025 to 10.83% and the economy destroyed twice as many jobs as a year before. These are, despite everything, different data (one is the Social Security record and the other is the reference survey to measure the evolution of the labor market).
After learning of these bad data, most experts and analysts agreed that we would have to wait for the figures for subsequent months to confirm whether it was a structural worsening or simply that corresponding to the first quarter of the year, which is always negative for the Spanish market for seasonal reasons, further aggravated this year by the consequences of the conflict in Iran.
Now, the figures from the Social Security registry released this Tuesday indicate that the labor market has kept pace in this month of April. However, both the original figures (without discounting the seasonal effect) and those that do correct this effect show a slightly weaker occupancy performance compared to the same month in previous years.
It is in the seasonally adjusted figures where this moderation in the market trend is most noticeable: once corrected for the calendar effect, the April figures show an increase in contributions of 41,753 new contributions and a decrease of 11,256 registered unemployed. The corrected statistics show other significant data such as that the Social Security system has been growing for 63 consecutive months. Registered unemployment also decreased in all sectors and in all autonomous communities.
Furthermore, the daily series of registrations and cancellations shows that throughout the month there were more than 22.2 million affiliations, specifically between April 27 and 29. All of this consolidates the total number of contributions clearly above 22 million workers, which already advanced in March, since that level was only exceeded in that month according to the seasonally adjusted series. However, on a negative note, at the end of the month a phenomenon that had been dampened in recent months occurred again and that reflects, at the very least, the high turnover in employment, since on the last day of April more than 170,000 memberships were cancelled, the highest figure at the end of the month since last October.
At the moment, neither Social Security nor Labor have highlighted the existence in their respective records that just started on April 16 and will receive applications until June 30. Despite this, the pace of hiring foreigners remains at the highest levels. Thus, in April, 96,684 new affiliations of foreigners were registered. This means that four out of every ten new positions were filled by foreigners.
The most dynamic sectors
Having said all this, the importance of the seasonal Easter campaign in last month’s data is seen in the fact that more than half of the new affiliations generated last month occurred in the hospitality sectors (115,284 more) and in commerce, with almost 15,000 new contributions. In both cases, adding salaried and self-employed workers from these sectors. Administrative activities (with an increase of more than 16,000 affiliations) and construction (11,353 more) and health (8,701) completed the list of the most dynamic sectors in April. The negative note was given by the educational sector, which, contrary to usual, since it is usually one of the activities with the highest gain in contributors, last month experienced a loss of 1,200 employees.
The self-employed group also recorded good data, reaching its highest level of affiliations: 3,444,973. This represents 15,439 more compared to March and a gain of 42,775 in the last twelve months.
Although the reduction in self-employment activity in two sectors in April compared to March drew attention: in transportation, where the number of self-employed workers decreased by 1,611, and in scientific-technical activities, which lost 2,710 workers. In both cases the monthly drop was close to 1% of total affiliations and could be making the increase in fuel prices felt due to the conflict in the Middle East.
Regarding new contracts registered last month, their global number decreased by 4% compared to March, with permanent contracts falling more sharply, by 6%, double the amount of temporary contracts (3%). In annual terms, permanent contracts increased by 7% and fixed-term contracts, by 13%. The weight of new permanent employees among new contractual signatures dropped one point compared to what had been usual in previous months of April, to 43%. And within these permanent hires (543,543 in total), those full-time were the majority (229,062) while those made full-time totaled 129,730 and in both cases they decreased by 9% and 12% compared to the previous month. Within the modality of permanent contracts, only discontinuous permanent contracts increased in April, which added 184,751 new ones, 4% more than in March.
