many companies acquiring an accumulation of personnel at times of recession or lower economic growth, prioritising the protection of employment over flexibility. This became clear during the pandemic, with the implementation of, for instance, the ERTE (temporary regulation of employment) scheme in Spain. The accumulation of workers by companies and

Although the global GDP growth of the Spanish and Italian economies in the second quarter of 2024 was in both cases 4.7% above their pre-pandemic levels, their composition is not the same. To begin with, as Figure 2[2] shows, real per capita GDP in Italy ended 2023 4.7% above that of 2019, compared with a modest 0.1% rise in Spain. Meanwhile, the r

Starting with GDP,[1] despite the fact that the Spanish and Italian economies endured the greatest fall as a consequence of the pandemic, by the second quarter of 2024 they were 4.7% above the fourth quarter of 2019. As shown on Figure 1, French GDP managed to climb to 3.8% above its pre-pandemic level, while in the case of Germany, the Eurozone’