Unemployment rose in February, and in 10 provinces there are now more people receiving unemployment benefits than there are registered unemployed individuals.
Contrary to the previous two years, unemployment rose in February by 3,584 people. The performance across autonomous communities was uneven, with significant increases in regions like Aragon, Madrid, and Cantabria, and notable decreases in the Balearic Islands, Asturias, and the Basque Country. In the annual calculation, unemployment continues to trend downward, with nearly 151,000 fewer unemployed people than in February 2025. However, the number of “employed job seekers” (demandantes de empleo ocupados) increased by 21,672 people.
The reality is that while employment is growing, it is doing so because the available work is being shared. Consequently, out of the total contracts signed—over one million—full-time permanent contracts do not even account for 19%. More than half of the permanent contracts are part-time, involving either shorter working hours or seasonal/intermittent schedules (fijos discontinuos).
Furthermore, the way statistics have been manipulated to present a better image means that, today, the “discontinuous permanent” workers (fijos discontinuos) make it impossible to know the true level of unemployment in Spain. This creates the paradox where there are more people receiving unemployment benefits than there are officially unemployed people. This happens because inactive “discontinuous permanent” workers who are eligible for benefits are not counted as unemployed. In other words, a large portion of workers in the tourist season, for example, collect unemployment benefits without being officially recorded as unemployed.
The provinces most affected by this phenomenon are the Balearic Islands (332.3%, meaning more than triple the number of people collecting unemployment benefits compared to the actual number of unemployed), Girona (123.8%), Huelva (117.3%), Huesca (114.5%), Teruel (107.4%), Soria (104.5%), Jaén (103.6%), Cáceres (102.7%), Segovia (101.8%), and Tarragona (101.7%
