The minimum wage

We read a few days ago how the number of registered workers in Spain reached a historic record, approaching 22 million, while the number of unemployed fell to 2.4 million, the lowest figure in the last 17 years. This quantitative evidence explains the difficulty the business world faces in finding personnel to respond to the general growth in economic activity. If the upward cycle continues, we will be faced with the need to receive and regularize millions of immigrants in the coming years, whom it will not be easy to accommodate with a minimum of dignity, as there is not even housing to shelter them.

The record employment rate reminds me of the heated debates each time the minimum wage has been raised recently; a series of increases that have allowed it to go from just over 700 euros gross per month to nearly 1,200 euros over a period of seven years. Each government proposal for an increase was met with a response from academic orthodoxy, led by the Bank of Spain, claiming that the initiative would destroy many jobs and ultimately harm the Spanish economy as a whole. To reinforce this assertion, dense empirical analyses were provided that purported to demonstrate the direct relationship between higher wages and rising unemployment. However, the figures demonstrate the radical failure of such negative predictions.

We question activities that survive artificially through precarious work.

This is nothing new, as recent history shows us the recurring failure of those economists who limit themselves to viewing reality from supposedly empirical formulations, without considering other considerations. Thus, on this occasion, had they been heeded, increasing wages based on inflation and little else, the 2.5 million workers who now earn €1,184 gross monthly would not earn €900; a gross injustice that would also have weakened economic growth and threatened social peace.

At the same time, given that the increases have not negatively affected employment, we must question the appropriateness of economic activities that, with no prospects for improvement, survive artificially thanks to precarious work; jobs that, moreover, require the massive influx of immigrants, whom we condemn to live in overcrowded urban areas, threatening the already fragile social balance. Thus, for example, if we aspire to less massive and higher-quality tourism, the progressive increase in wages is not only a matter of social justice but also an incentive to abandon those that have no future and consolidate a supply supported by good professionals and decent salaries. It's not too much to ask.