The increase in effective hours is maintained thanks to the increase in the number of contributors and the number of hours worked by contributors.

The Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration has published the statistics on actual hours worked and hours contributed for the last quarter of 2023. This information is calculated based on the social contributions paid by companies. The data is published every quarter with a series starting in January 2019.

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Actual hours worked in the last quarter of 2023 up 9.1%

This is a statistic based on administrative data, compiled from the hours contributed and the labour relations per contributor reported to the Social Security. To calculate the effective hours worked, it is necessary to deduct the hours of workers on ERTE, temporary incapacity and those receiving other benefits (birth and care of a child, risk during breastfeeding and risk during pregnancy). These corrected contribution hours for these suspensive situations or, in other words, hours worked are 9.1% higher in the last quarter of 2023 than in the last quarter of 2019, if we compare the data for each quarter.

To avoid the volatility that exists between the different quarters and to be able to appreciate the medium-term evolution of actual hours worked, an index based on the four-quarter moving average is included. This index stood at 109.1 points in the last quarter of 2023, with 100 being the figure for the last quarter of 2019, which means that actual hours worked have increased by 9.1% compared to the pre-pandemic level.

Contributed hours 2023

This 9.1% increase in actual hours worked is mainly due to the combination of the increase in the number of contributors to the General Social Security Scheme in this period (8.4%, or more than 1.25 million people), and the fact that actual hours per contributor are 0.7% higher than pre-pandemic levels.

As can be seen in the graph below, the evolution shown by this index coincides to a large extent with the data corresponding to the INE Quarterly Labour Cost Survey, which shows an increase of 9.5% in actual hours worked concerning the pre-pandemic period. The enormous coincidence in both the level and time evolution of two very different statistics provides robustness to the behaviour that can be deduced from them. On the other hand, as can be seen in the same graph, both statistics provide significantly higher results than those observed in the latest available data from the Labour Force Survey and Quarterly National Accounts statistics, according to which in the fourth quarter of 2023 the actual hours worked would have barely increased by 3.5% and 2.4%, respectively, concerning the pre-pandemic level. A break in the relationship between these series is also observed from the end of 2021.

Contributed hours 2023

Explanation of the published statistical report
This statistical report, of a quarterly nature, is based on the contribution data for common contingencies of the General Treasury of the Social Security, as well as the Statistics on Collective Labour Agreements, of the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy.

The following data appear in the report:

The second column shows the average number of contributors to the General Scheme in that quarter.
The third column (1) shows the number of hours contributed for all workers in the general scheme. The methodology shows how this figure, which combines observed and imputed contribution data, is calculated.
Columns 2, 3 and 4 express the contribution hours of workers in ERTE, Temporary Incapacity and receiving other benefits.
The seventh column (5) reflects the actual hours worked, i.e. the hours contributed in each of the quarters, discounting the periods in ERTE, Temporary Incapacity or other benefits.
The last two columns reflect the four-quarter moving average of the actual hours worked and the index constructed from this data, respectively. This operation allows the volatility between quarters to be eliminated to calculate the real medium-term evolution of effective hours.