Date Published: 03/12/2020
ARCHIVED - November increase takes unemployment in Spain up to 3.85 million
ARCHIVED ARTICLE
650,000 more jobless than a year ago as the pandemic hits the Spanish economy
Despite the rise in the incidence rate of Covid-19 in Spain during much of November the increase in unemployment remained close to what might be expected in “normal” conditions in the eleventh month of the year, the total rising by 25,269 to 3,851,382.
This represents a rise of 0.66 per cent during the month, but the year-on-year comparison illustrates all too clearly the effect of the pandemic: the downward trend which had been maintained for over five years has been abruptly curtailed and the figure is now 20.4 per cent (or over 650,000) higher than at the end of November 2019, reaching levels last seen in 2016.
On top of this, another 746,900 workers were still benefitting from ERTE furlough schemes at the end of the month, a figure which rose by more than 18,000 as restrictions on certain activities were re-introduced in an effort to curb the second wave of the pandemic, and the high unemployment rate is likely to slow down Spain’s economic recovery: the rate now stands at 16.2 per cent as opposed to only 8.4 per cent in the whole of the Eurozone, and only in Greece (16.8 per cent) is the situation worse.
Looking on the bright side, the Ministry of Work reports that of the 950,000 jobs “lost” during the first wave of the pandemic in March and April over half (578,090) have now been “recovered”, but the figures remain particularly worrying among young adults, where the unemployment rate is as high as 40.4 per cent.
During November the unemployment figure rose in 14 of Spain’s 17 regions, the most significant increase being reported in the Balearics (4.4 per cent), while the sharpest decrease was also one of 4.4 per cent, this time in the Basque Country.
Over the last 12 months, though, the upward trend is reflected to a greater or lesser degree in all of the Autonomous Communities, the most significant increases being in the Balearics (37.3 per cent) and the Canaries (27.2 per cent), where tourism accounts for a large proportion of the regional economies. The least significant rises are reported in Castilla-La Mancha (7 per cent) and Extremadura (8.4 per cent), where the economy depends more heavily on agriculture than in most other regions.
It should be remembered that the monthly data regarding unemployment which are produced by the Ministry of Employment are usually lower than those featured in the quarterly Active Population Survey (EPA), because the EPA also takes into account those who are out of work but for one reason or another have chosen not to register as such at employment offices. On this occasion, though, the latest EPA for the third quarter of 2020 reports that there were 3.73 million unemployed in Spain at the end of September, 15.8 per cent more than twelve months previously.