Bankia Estudios | Last year ended with the loss of more than 100,000 Spanish companies, a fall of 360,105 Social Security affiliates – the first decline in seven years – and an increase of 724,532 unemployed. It must be added 755,613 workers under temporary lay-offs programs and 349,342 self-employed receiving extraordinary unemployment benefits; in other words, more than 1.1 million people who, although technically still considered employed, are not actually working or are working reduced hours.

The labor market in Spain added 84,013 affiliates in September, the largest increase for this month in the series, while the jobless people fell by 26,329, also an historic high for the ninth month of the year, reported the Ministry of Labor today. With this figures the total number of unemployed reached 3,776,485 by the end of September. Even so, Spain leads European unemployment in August, with a rate of 16.2%, which is double than that of the Eurozone (8.1%), according to data published yesterday by Eurostat.

The number of unemployed in Spain increased by 26,573 people in May, compared to 282,900 the previous month and -84,075 in May 2019. This is the worst May figure in recent years, but it is a vast improvement on previous months (up 282,000 in April and up 302,265 in March).This may be enough to raise some optimism in the Spanish labour market. The labour market data for May also reflects an increase of 97,462 people registered with Social Security compared to the previous month.