Media employment at its highest in 13 years
Employment, one of the traditional obstacles to stability in newsrooms, marks an encouraging upturn. In 2022, the media in Spain registered 108,000 employees, a figure that not only certifies the recovery of the COVID-19 impact – since 2020 it has grown by 22% – but also the improvement of pre-pandemic figures. Compared to 2019, 100,000 new employees have joined information companies.
Last year’s figure is the highest in the last 13 years, according to data compiled by the BBVA Foundation in its report Evolución de los medios de comunicación e impacto de la crisis reciente, based on Eurostat and the Instituto Nacional de Estadística. One has to go back to 2010 and 2011 to see a similar level of employees (when they reached 107,000).
However, this employment reading could be tempered by a comparison with the volume of employment in 2008 (121,000 employees), when the global financial crisis exploded and marked a turning point in the sector. Since then, this indicator has fallen by 11% and the added value of these activities – which include newspaper, magazine, cinema and TV publishing, radio and TV programming and broadcasting, and news agencies and information portals – by 9%, to reach 6.2 billion euros in 2020 (latest available data).
Employment in newsrooms represents 0.46% of the total number of people employed in Spain, half that of countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States.
The media sector accounted for 0.61% of total gross value added and 0.46% of employment in 2020. These percentages are lower than the EU average, with 0.69% and 0.52%, respectively, and significantly far from countries such as the United Kingdom or the United States, which managed to bring both indicators close to the 1% barrier.
Newspaper and magazine publishing is the only one of the four areas analysed where employment in Spain fell between 2008 and 2020. In this field, employment fell by 34%, from 33,000 to 21,000. It increased the most in News agencies and information portals – from 6,000 to 11,000 – and in Film and TV production and distribution – from 32,000 to 38,000. It also improved in Radio and TV programming and broadcasting, although to a lesser extent – from 29,000 to 31,000.
More freelancers than in 2020
The BBVA Foundation report based on official sources also shows an increase in freelance journalists. Last year, 14% of media employees were freelance, 4 points more than in 2020. Compared to that year, the percentage of permanent employees has remained the same, at 79%, although this is 5 points higher than in 2008.
The productivity figure is obtained from the ratio between added value and the number of employees. This is an indicator that in Spain -both in the general economy and in the media sector- is usually low. Productivity in newsrooms is around 20% below the European average, which especially affects newspaper and magazine publishing, with a gap of -29% compared to the EU, and radio and TV programming, with -31%.
The data on employment in newsrooms published in this report are in line with those collected at the beginning of the year by the Madrid Press Association in the opposite direction, on registered unemployment with data from the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy. That report indicated that in 2022, 6,098 journalists were registered as unemployed in the employment offices, 17% less than in the same month of 2021. This is the lowest unemployment rate recorded since 2008. The Community of Madrid, Andalusia and Catalonia are home to more than half of the unemployed journalists.
