Second jobs have shot up in Malaga province by 51% in the past decade

Workers paying social security for two or more work contracts have reached 14,035, as more people take up part-time jobs to keep up with the high cost of living

Susana Zamora

Monday, 3 April 2023, 13:32

Malaga province ended 2022 with a new all-time high for social security contributor figures, with an average of 669,223 in December.

This was the largest rise recorded in Spain, behind only the bigger cities such as Madrid and Barcelona.

The increase can be put down in part to the number of people with at least two jobs in the province, therefore appearing more than once in the contributor totals.

This figure has not stopped growing in the past ten years, shooting up 51 per cent to reach 14,035 workers last December, according to the latest data from the Institute of Statistics and Cartography of Andalucía.

The trend is also reflected across Spain, where for the first time since 2008 the figure of 500,000 people with a second job has been exceeded.

Óscar Marcenaro, Professor of Applied Economics at the University of Malaga, pointed out that one contributing factor towards the rise could be that authorities were unearthing more companies which had not registered workers, and were therefore trying to evade social security payments.

It is "undoubted" that the type of job contract is also an important factor, with the half a million "discontinuous permanent workers" (seasonal workers whose contract carries over to successive years, despite fixed breaks) tipping the balance.

"For a discontinuous permanent worker, employees may be getting a second job in case they lose the first one," Marcenaro added.

Part-time contracts are also behind the rise in the figures, in which people require another job to make ends meet.

Most of the workers with more than one employer in Malaga are women (8,947) compared to men (5,088) and aged between 30 and 49 years, according to the figures.

“Although having more than one job in general is quite balanced by gender, approximately two thirds of part-time work in Spain is covered by women and many of them in domestic service. Therefore, this group may be contributing notably to this growth,” Marcenaro said.

About 20% of second jobs in Spain are filled by foreigners (many of them employed in the hotel and domestic service industry).

A total of 60% of the moonlighters have a university degree and 32% are qualified professionals, the data also showed.

Despite Spain being at its highest level of employment since the 2008 crisis, it is still below the average for European countries.

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