Numerous professional guilds frequently point out the delays in granting licenses, permits or services by the public administrations of Lanzarote, which they usually attribute to the lack of sufficient technical personnel.
Ekonomus has analyzed the staff of the different local institutions on the island, which has 25,000 more inhabitants than in 2015, and in all of them there has been a decrease in public employees per thousand inhabitants in the last ten years, with the only exception of San Bartolomé, which improves slightly.
The institutions that serve more people, such as the Cabildo or the Arrecife City Council, will always have fewer officials per inhabitant than small municipalities such as Haría or Tinajo, but their percentage evolution is perfectly comparable.
The figures have been published by the Lanzarote Data Center based on the Statistics of Registered Employment in the Public Sector of the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics (ISTAC).
The Cabildo of Lanzarote, despite having to serve 25,000 more residents than in 2015, currently has a total of 1,206 public workers, compared to the 1,337 that were counted during the first quarter of 2015.
Thus, the number of public workers per thousand inhabitants in the Cabildo of Lanzarote has decreased from 9.3 employees in 2015 to 7.4 this year, making it the third local institution on the island where the ratio has proportionally worsened the most after Tinajo and Teguise.
However, the largest decrease was recorded in Tinajo, which has gone from having 25.9 public workers a decade ago to 17.6 today. Not only does the population increase influence, but also, Tinajo now has 30 fewer public workers than ten years ago, when there were 151.
The second largest decrease in proportion occurred in the town council of Teguise, which has 60 fewer public workers than ten years ago when there were 339. There, the ratio has gone from 15.8 per thousand inhabitants to just 11.7.
In fourth position in the decrease of public personnel per inhabitant is Yaiza, which in addition to the population increase, has 15 fewer public workers than ten years ago, when there were 284. There, the ratio has gone from 18 officials per thousand inhabitants to 14.9 today.
In Arrecife, the fifth institution where the number of workers per inhabitant decreased the most, there are 499, which is equivalent to a ratio per thousand inhabitants of 7.3 positions. Ten years ago there were 467, so the proportion was 8.2 positions per thousand inhabitants.
The town council of Haría currently has 102 public workers compared to the 97 there were a decade ago. However, its ratio has gone from 20.2 to 18.3 workers per thousand inhabitants.
For its part, the town council of Tías has 224 workers, eleven more than ten years ago, but its ratio of public employees per thousand inhabitants decreases from 10.7 in 2015 to 10.4 in 2025.
The only local institution that improves its ratio compared to ten years ago is San Bartolomé, where there are 227 public employees, 14 more than ten years ago. Thus, its ratio of employees per inhabitant increased minimally, from 12.3 in the first quarter of 2015 to 12.4 in the same period of 2025.