More than 40,000 places in 2024

The Council of Ministers approved this Tuesday the royal decree on public employment offers for 2024, with more than 40,000 vacancies. According to the Government spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, this offer of positions for the General State Administration places “a special emphasis on both attention to citizens and the administration of Justice and local administration”.

“For the first time, we have exceeded 40,000 new positions on the payroll, consolidating a situation in which we have tripled the annual increase in recent years compared to what happened between 2012 and 2017,” said the Minister of Public Service, José Luis Escrivá, who indicated that in terms of net employment, Spain has gone from an average annual loss of around 5,000 public workers in the period from 2012 to 2018 to a net increase of more than 9,000 for this year.

As Escrivá had already announced this Monday, more than 10% of the positions in the General State Administration are reserved for people with disabilities. There are a total of 3,147, of which 629 will be allocated to people with intellectual disabilities who, as he indicated this Tuesday in a press conference, “being one of the most vulnerable groups, it is more difficult to work on their employability”.

Free access and internal promotion

Of the total of 40,146 vacancies, 31,465 are for positions in the General State Administration. These depend on the Government and its different agencies, through which it carries out the functions or provides the citizens with the services that depend directly on the Executive. This includes, for example, the State Public Employment Service, Social Security or the General Directorate of Traffic, where the Government is seeking reinforcement. It does not include, therefore, those public workers who depend on the autonomous communities or municipal corporations, such as the bulk of health or education workers.

Of these more than 30,000 positions, only 20,840 are open access. That is, any citizen can apply for them. The remaining 10,625 will be internal promotions, with which the Executive intends to configure a “model in which the career paths and professional careers of public workers are promoted through different channels.”

Police, Civil Guard and Armed Forces

Minister Escrivá has highlighted “a very significant percentage both in the State Security Forces and Corps and in the Armed Forces”. There will be a total of 8,681, 21.6% of the total number of places offered. The call ranges from 3,158 places for civil guards to 2,857 for police officers and 2,666 for military personnel.

“Strategic” sectors

During the press conference after the Council of Ministers, Escrivá highlighted the “reinforcement at the local level, with more than 500 places for nationally qualified personnel”. Although the specific bodies are not yet known, according to the ministry’s data, these are the “strategic sectors” where the Executive wants to have an impact.

With the support of UGT

The plan has only the support of UGT. Both Comisiones Obreras and the civil servants’ union CSIF had withdrawn from the agreement with the Civil Service.

CSIF points out that this public employment offer represents a “brake on the renewal of staff”, because “it reduces net job creation in the State Administration by 6.10%. “It must be taken into account that in the next 8 years, 60% of the staff will likely retire”, they warn. In addition, this union recalls the “delays in the processes”, which have led to the accumulation of “close to 50,000 unfilled positions” since 2019, some of which “have expired due to poor management and cannot be called again”.

Replacement rate

The Ministry of Digital Transformation and Civil Service had set itself the goal of recovering the jobs lost during the 2008 crisis, some 80,000, and bringing the figures closer to the OECD average, around 18.63%, two points higher than in Spain. Among the measures to correct this imbalance, the Government had announced the elimination of the replacement rate from 2025, the limit imposed by the central Government on public employment offers.