The number of jobless people registered with Spain’s unemployment offices stood at 3,7 million at end-December 2016, representing a fall of 390,534 people, or 9.54%, for the year as a whole. This is the fourth consecutive anual decline and the biggest since the historic series started in 1996, according to the Labour Ministry.
Caretaker Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is stubbornly holding on to his target-promise that Spain can create 20 million jobs by 2020 if the current economic policy is maintained. But the reality of the Spanish economy is just as obstinately demonstrating that there are very considerable holes.
It’s good news for Spain’s economic recovery. The number of unemployed people registered with Spain’s public employment services dropped by 83,993, or 2.2%, in July from June to 3.683.061 million, the lowest level since August 2009. It was also the biggest fall in the month of July since 1997.
Summer’s here and so are seasonal contracts. The latest employment survey showed the jobless rate in Spain went down to 20% in Q2, its lowest level since the summer of 2010. And yet employment is still a heavy burden for Spaniards, Greece being the only EU country with a higher rate.
The number of unemployed people registered with Spain’s Employment Office fell by 124,349 in June from May to 3.767.054. The decline in relative terms was 3.2% and is the second largest in historical series, only beaten by the fall recorded in June 2013.
The average number of employed people signed on with the Social Security rose 1.13% to 17.661.840 in May from April, according to data released by the Employment and Social Security Ministry. Meanwhile, the number of jobless fell by 119,768 people in May from the previous month, standing at below 4 million for the first time in six years.
Yiannis Mouzakis via MacroPolis | Last July the conditionality of Greece’s third programme included savings of 1 percent of GDP from pensions. It did not require any major fortune telling skills to anticipate that this would soon lead the government of Alexis Tsipras into an extremely tense situation.
The blog RWER recently published a very interesting article about Ireland. It tells the tale of an economic miracle, which no-one has been able to figure out yet. And it raises doubts that can well apply in Spain’s case. And Krugman has written an inspiring post about the possible perverse relationship between debt and the decline in Portugal’s population, which could call into question the theory of Optimal Monetary Areas.
Miguel Navascués | Junk labour contracts in Spain were created by the former Socialist Prime Minister Felipe González in 1984. At that time, González fought against the trade unions to introduce the temporary work contract. This proved to be of no use, as unemployment had increased to about 23% by the end of his term in office in 1993.
Fernando Barciela | Spanish unemployment fell again in November, reversing a three-month upward trend. Last month, 27,000 fewer people were registered as jobless than in October, taking the total number of unemployed to 4.15 million. This is good news, given that at the peak of Spain’s economic crisis, the jobless rate reached a record 26.9%. There has also been a rise in Social Security affiliations, which increased from 16.3% in 2013 to 17.2% in October 2015.