ARCHIVED - Gota fría storms partly to blame for poor Murcia unemployment figures

Problems in the agriculture sector were exacerbated by flooding in September and December

The results of the national government’s Active Population Survey for the fourth quarter of 2019 have rung a series of alarm bells in the Region of Murcia, where the number of people out of work rose by over 15,000 during the three months to reach 117,200.

This abrupt jump in the total is the most significant for many years, and many analysts are putting it down to problems in the agriculture sector related in part to the two “gota fría” storms in mid-September and early December. These two events led to a temporary fall in the number of workers required in flooded crop fields, of course, but the difficulties in the sector appear to be more generalized, and only this week two more important agricultural companies, Agroherni in Las Palas and El Niño del Campo in Lorca, have entered official insolvency proceedings.

At the same time the courts have also confirmed that more companies in the sector are entering insolvency, including Agromem in Alhama de Murcia, Gasolenor in Calasparra and Campos y Serrano in Mazarrón. These firms now have three months to attempt to solve their problems before beginning the next stage of insolvency in which an independent administrator takes over the running of any company which fails to do so: that is now the situation for Agroherni and El Niño del Campo.

Another example of the difficulties in the sector hit the regional headlines last December, when almost 500 employees of Agrasa in Águilas accepted redundancy payments after the company went bankrupt.

Back with the effect on the employment market in Murcia, the latest figures show that it cannot be denied. The EPA which was published this week shows that at the end of December the agriculture sector accounted for only 10.8 of all employment in the Region, the lowest proportion since 2009 and a sharp fall from 13.1 per cent in the first quarter of 2019. At the same time, the unemployment rate in the Region is now 16.1 per cent, two full points higher than the previous quarter, and it is reported that 11,700 jobs were lost in the Region’s agriculture sector.

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