MADRID, July 10 (Xinhua) -- Spain will recover the pre-crisis level of employment at the end of 2019 if it continues to grow at a remarkable rate, BBVA Research said on Tuesday.
Before the financial crisis began, Spain's unemployment rate was at around 8 percent while nowadays reaches 15.8 percent, although in the hardest years of the recession it peaked at almost 27 percent.
According to local newspaper La Vanguardia, the head of Macroeconomic Analysis of the entity, Rafael Domenech, stressed that Spain needs to strengthen its fiscal space to face future recessions and improve the sustainability of the welfare state in the face of aging population.
He pointed out as priorities for the country fiscal consolidation and reduction of public debt.
He encouraged the government to carry out structural reforms that increase public revenues through higher GDP, higher employment and higher productivity.
BBVA Research stated that the reforms undertaken are remarkable and that 86 percent of the jobs lost when the crisis hit Spain are already recovered.
In an interview with Xinhua, BBVA Research expert Miguel Cardoso stressed that now the priority is to take a step further to reduce the precariousness of some jobs.
In fact, the report highlighted that permanent jobs are, on average, 15 percent more productive than temporary jobs, and believed that productivity improvement requires "appropriate policies to promote permanent hiring and reduce the high rate of temporary employment."
In addition, BBVA Research encouraged the government to implement additional policies to continue improving the external competitiveness of the Spanish economy, while assuming that if the existing risks, such as protectionism or political uncertainty do not have an impact, GDP will grow by about 3 percent this year and by 2.5 percent next year.
