The slowdown that the job market is suffering in Spain in this final stretch of the year is reflected in the vacancies offered for the Christmas campaign, which have been reduced by 8% compared to last year.
November closed with a total of 215,896 job vacancies across the country, fewer than in the same period of 2022, but slightly higher than in October (2%), as companies have hired staff for ‘Black Friday’ and are already preparing for the Christmas holidays, according to data from the employment portal Infojobs.
Almost half of the jobs are located in key categories such as commercial and sales; purchasing, logistics and warehousing; customer service, and retail. Positions for shop assistants, telemarketers, sales department assistants, cashiers, etc. predominate.
The impact of Spain’s labour reform is also noticeable in these posts, since although most of them have an expiry date, there are more than 40% (87,043) that offer an open-ended contract, while 31% are temporary. Similarly, there is a predominance of full-time vacancies, 62% of the total, compared to 18.7% offering a part-time position. There are many other vacancies that do not indicate the type of contract.
It is not surprising that in the month of November, in which ‘Black Friday’ and Cyber Monday have a notable effect, the most demanded categories are commercial and sales (with 15% of total vacancies), purchasing, logistics and warehouse (14%), customer service (13%), with the addition of retail sales, which is maintained in the monthly comparison (+ 2%) regarding the total vacancies of October. The growth of this sector occurred in the previous period, when companies began preparing commercial campaigns for the last quarter of the year. All of them are key categories in this period of the year and represent more than 100,000 vacancies, about 47% of the total; almost half of the vacancies during November focused on the start of the pre-Christmas campaign.
Customer service is the category that has grown the most from those mentioned, with an increase of 15% compared to October, with more than 3,700 jobs offered. However, the category that has accumulated the most vacancies in November is commercial and retail, with almost 34,000 positions on offer. In the year-on-year comparison, purchasing, logistics and warehouses, increased by 11% and in total amounts to more than 30,600 vacancies.
In addition, these categories are the ones with the largest number of registered candidates: customer service has almost 132,000 vacancies; purchasing, logistics and warehouse reaches 76,600; and commercial and sales exceeds 62,700. The retail sector has more than 20,000 vacancies.
November is a month focused on intense commercial campaigns related to Black Friday and Cyber Monday and also begins Christmas, which lasts all the month of December. In this sense, the most demanded professions on the InfoJobs platform reflect this activity. Among the ten most demanded profiles are for telemarketers, with more than 22,000 vacancies; warehouse staff, with 15,800 positions offered; delivery drivers, with 9,700 vacancies; and forklift operators with 4,600 vacancies.
The most demanded profile within the professions directly related to retail sales has been that of clerks, with 63% of the total number of positions demanded in the category. They are followed by the teleoperator (6%), sales department assistant (5.5%), store cashier and store manager (5% in both cases), and store assistant (2%).
Source: SUR In English
