MADRID, 21 Feb. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The services sector registered an average increase in its turnover of 19.9% in 2022, its highest annual increase since 2001, when the series began, according to data released this Tuesday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).
With the rise in 2022, sales of services chain two consecutive years of increases, after in 2021 they increased by 15.8%. In 2020, the year the pandemic began, they plummeted 15.6% due to the almost total stoppage of the sector, especially the hospitality industry, between the months of March and June.
The hotel industry was precisely the subsector that increased its turnover the most last year, 44.4%, followed by administrative activities and auxiliary services (30.7%); wholesale trade (24.7%); transportation and storage (22.1%); retail trade (12.4%); professional, scientific and technical activities (10.7%); information and communications (8.7%), and sale and repair of vehicles (8.1%).
Within the hospitality industry, accommodation services increased their turnover by 78% in 2022, while food and beverage services raised it by 31.8%.
Aside from the hotel and catering business, the strong rise in sales from travel agencies (145.7%) and air transport (106%), as well as taxi transport (54.3%), after the gradual recovery from normality after pandemic restrictions.
The employment created by the services sector registered an average increase of 3.9% last year, its highest rise since the beginning of the series, which also chains two years of upturns after the disaster it suffered in 2020 due to the irruption of the Covid (-4.3%).
Corrected for seasonal and calendar effects, billing for services rose 20.3% in 2022 as a whole, while the seasonally adjusted interannual rate stood at 14.4% in December of last year, expanding by 1.4 points the November rise.
In December 2022, the turnover of services (without adjusting for seasonal and calendar effects) increased by 11.1% in relation to the same month of 2021, a rate 2.8 points lower than that of November. With this rebound, the sector accumulates 22 consecutive months of year-on-year rises, although December’s was the least pronounced of all of them.
In monthly rate (December 2022 compared to November of the same year), the billing of services, eliminating the seasonal and calendar effect, fell by 0.7%, its biggest drop since last July, when it fell by 1, 7%.
