Date Published: 27/10/2020
ARCHIVED - 355,000 jobs lost as Spanish unemployment rises due to coronavirus
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
More people in work during the summer but the unemployment rate is back over 16 per cent
Spain’s Active Population Survey for the third quarter of 2020, which was published by the central government’s statistics unit on Tuesday morning, confirms that this summer was the worst in terms of unemployment since 2012 due in large part to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, although on the positive side the number of people in work and making Social Security contributions also rose in the latter months as people returned to work after the stoppages of the lockdown period.
The figures quoted today are not the same as those published by the unemployment offices on a monthly basis (these are quarterly figures) and which are compiled based on the number of people actively seeking work; these instead analyse those of working age who could be working and examine their situation (for example, more than a million people fall outside of the categorisation by which the unemployment office figures are produced as they fail to meet the criteria for receiving financial unemployment support).
The number of people out of work is reported to have risen by 355,000 (or 10.5 per cent) between 1st July and 30th September to reach 3,722,900, and is now over half a million (or 15.8 per cent) higher than a year ago. This is despite the fact that in theory the “new normality” began in Spain this summer and with the resumption of economic activity as many as 569,000 more people were in work than in the previous quarter: this represents a new record for the creation of employment in Spain, more than doubling the previous best in the third quarter of 2017, but of course it has to be borne in mind that in the second quarter of this year over 1.1 million jobs were lost during the first state of emergency declared in response to Covid.
At the end of the quarter, then, the number of people in employment had leapt back above 19 million (19,176,900) but was still well short of the 19.6 million reached at the end of last year, and since the start of the coronavirus crisis around 800,000 jobs have been lost.
By the end of September around 80 per cent of the 3.4 million who had been on furlough as part of Spain’s “ERTE” temporary employment regulation schemes had returned to work. Technically, the remaining 20 per cent are classified as being “in work” because technically they’re furloughed and therefore not “out of work.”
But the stand-out figure remains the increase of 355,000 in the number of unemployed, the steepest rise ever recorded during the summer in this country. In addition, it has to be remembered that over 700,000 more were still on “ERTE” furlough 8and are therefore not classed as unemployed), a figure which must be expected to rise over the final quarter of the year as the second wave of the pandemic brings with it the re-introduction of the various of the restrictions which were enforced during the spring.
Already the unemployment rate has risen over the last 12 months by 2.3 points to 16.26 per cent, and further increases appear inevitable as the effects of the coronavirus become more and more far-reaching.
The Survey also reports that the proportion of those in employment who were working from home fell during the summer from 16.2 per cent to 10.3 per cent, equating to 1,975,100 people, but at the same time the number of households in which all adult members were unemployed increased by almost 24,000 to 1.17 million (including 308,800 single-person households). Similarly, the number of households in which all adults were employed dropped by 54,300 to 10.3 million.
Needless to say, the increases in unemployment affected practically all of Spain’s 17 regions during the quarter, the only exceptions being the Balearic Islands and Cantabria, while the year-on-year comparisons show rises in all except Asturias.