Boosted by the start of Holy Week (Semana Santa), hiring grew in March compared to both February and March 2025, when the holiday period took place later in April. Consequently, unemployment fell by 22,934 people in March, a decrease of 0.94%. However, this required the signing of 1,311,000 contracts. Of these, nearly 577,000 were permanent contracts (contratos indefinidos). If they were truly permanent—and not just in name only—unemployment would be dropping at a significantly faster rate.
Although the largest absolute drop in unemployment occurred in the service sector, the construction industry saw the highest percentage decrease. There were slight increases in unemployment within the agricultural sector and among long-term unemployed individuals or new job seekers, categorized under “No previous employment.” Women continue to represent 60.28% of the unemployed population.
Nonetheless, none of this prevented the final day of the month from following tradition—marking one of the great flaws of our labor market—as more than 141,000 Social Security cancellations were processed. Spain neared 22 million active affiliations on March 30th, but on the 31st, tens of thousands of those jobs were destroyed.
