According to a survey conducted by the main union of this group, two in three self-employed workers in Spain will soon raise prices due to pressure on their costs from rising raw material and energy costs.

Inflation is fueled by efforts to control prices among the group of self-employed workers, where nearly two-thirds of the nearly three million registered in Spain are shifting increases in energy prices, prices of raw materials or services to fuel .

It follows from the barometer that the National Federation of Associations of Autonomous Workers (ATA) has carried out between May 13 and 16, 2022 within the framework of the surveys that the association has published from time to time since the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic. doing. 19 To know the status of the group.

Specifically, 57% of the self-employed assure that they have been forced to raise the prices of their products or activities as a result of rising energy prices and production costs, while 37.8% have not. Of course, two out of three self-employment surveys expect their prices to increase if this rate of inflation continues.

The study also warned that two in three self-employed workers are yet to fully recover from the economic consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Of the 66.5% of the self-employed, who say they haven’t managed to fix their business, 30.2% don’t refuse to close it because of the difficulties it causes, and 6.6% even describe their situation as “so see as bad”. Notifies Servimedia that they have to shut down.

Looking to the future, 30.3% of one million self-employed workers, despite the abolition of restrictions imposed by the pandemic, remain pessimistic about their activity and expect it to decrease in the coming months, albeit by half More people think it will stay the same or even improve. Furthermore, 39.8% believe their business will be no different in the remainder of 2022 and 14.1% are optimistic and expect to see an increase in their activity in the coming months.

In this context, 9.4% of the self-employed indicated that they were not able to sustain their workforce in the first four months of 2022 and had to reduce it. 34.7% retained a similar number of workers and 42.2% of the surveyed self-employed indicate that they do not have employees, as their activity does not require it. Only 6.9% of the self-employed claimed to have increased the number of employees in their charge between January and April this year.

For the coming months, 300,000 freelancers, 10.3%, believe they will have to reduce their workforce in the coming months if the current situation does not change, although 31.3% say they will retain it. Will keep Only 6.8% will increase the number of workers. On the other hand, according to an ATA study, currently only 1.2% of self-employed people have employees in some sort of ERTE.