The Economy of Catalonia

9%
8%
7.9%
7%
6.5% 6.4% 6.2%
5.8% 5.8% 5.6% 5.6% 5.4% 5.4% 5.4% 5.3% 5.2% 5.2% 5.1% 4.9%
4.6%
6%
5%
4%
3%
2%
1%
0%
Extremadura
Source: Personnel Central Register, 2012, INE 2012.
Aragon
Cas. Lleón
Madrid
Canary Islands
Cas. L Man.
Murcia
Andalusia
Spain
Cantabria
Galicia
Asturies
Basque Country
4.1%
Navarra
Rioja
Balearic Islands
Valencia
Catalonia
Figure 6. Spanish public administration employees (state, regional, local and
universities) in relation to the total population (percentage of total of population for
year 2012)
Catalonia is the Autonomous Region with the lowest proportion of
public workers, followed by Valencia and the Balearic Islands. It should
be noted that these are the three regions of the Mediterranean Arc that
also suffer a high fiscal deficit.
It is a fact that Catalonia has a low provision of public sector workers,
particularly in relation to GNP, as well as low public worker salaries
compared with the total employee salaries. These two data are, taking
into account the mean difference, the lowest in Spain. (Pérez et al.,
2011).
Figure 7 shows that the number of workers in the public sector of the
Autonomous Regions and those in the public sector of Local Administration
is reasonably proportional to the total population of all Spanish
regions except for Extremadura.
On the other hand, when analysing the proportion of workers in the
Spanish Central Administration, very different data is found.
122 The Economy of Catalonia