The figure of the self-employed has become an essential pillar for the economic survival of rural Spain. While depopulation and lack of generational change threaten traditional trades, such as plumbingmasonry or electricity, there are still professionals who make a living in rural areas.
This is the case of José Luis Gil, a 37-year-old self-employed electrician living in Arenas de San Pedro, a municipality in Ávila that has 6,000 inhabitants, which he explained in an interview for NewsWork the difficulties that the sector faces, what it invoices in its company and what it pays its employees.
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An electrician by vocation, José Luis has run his own company since 2009. And although he is the son of an electrician, he claims to have learned the trade since he was 16 years old, “tinkering around and helping as much as possible at home,” and recognizes that his career has been marked both by the passion for the trade and by the need to take economic risks to move his company forward. “I wasted 7 or 8 years economically, because everything I earned was to reinvest in the company. I had no payroll,” he explains.
How much does a self-employed electrician earn?
Currently, his company ‘GIL-QUI Group’ employs 5 people and invoices between 45,000 and 50,000 euros per month, according to the data provided by the professional. However, despite the company’s financial stability, it recognizes that its payroll “is lower than that of my employees”; decision that he has made himself to be able to continue reinvesting in the company. “I cover my expenses, I make a little savings and the rest goes to the business.”
“My payroll is smaller than what my workers earn. A normal worker, here in the company, earns 1,960 euros gross. That is, almost 2,000 euros.”
A salary that, according to José Luis, is competitive within the sector in rural areas, although lower than that of large cities. “Here we bill half as much as in a big city for the same services, but the business and personnel costs are the same,” he laments, despite claiming his choice of having chosen to live and develop professionally in his own town. “I feel privileged.”
Differences between a self-employed and salaried electrician
However, the electricity sector offers very different career paths depending on whether you practice the profession as employed or self-employed worker. While employees tend to enjoy greater salary stability and a limited working day, those who choose to become entrepreneurs assume much greater responsibility, both economically and in the daily management of the business. “In the end, being an entrepreneur you are afraid, because you want to have work for everyone, you want to maintain everything and grow,” he says.
This is what happens in José Luis’s company, where his employees work 8-hour days from Monday to Friday, a schedule that he considers aligned with the working conditions of other sectors. “A technician works 8 hours and goes home, I don’t. I can work at least 12 hours a day or even 14, and there are weeks when I work from Monday to Sunday,” he explains.
This is summarized in “the security that at the end of the month you receive a salary,” says José Luis, “in addition to responsibility, which is reduced to what is fair, to your 8 hours a day and until the next day.” In his case, and with the risk that comes with being self-employed, he recognizes that he had to ask his family for help and that, perhaps at that time he would have preferred the situation that a salaried employee has. However, José Luis has never thrown in the towel, because “I had a dream and I went for it,” he concluded.