Unemployment in Spain

Map of unemployment by province. Unemployment is a big problem in the south and west of Spain, especially in the least industrialized zones and the areas that were exposed most to the Spanish property bubble.

Though unemployment is a general problem for the whole world, the degree of unemployment in Spain is especially high in respect to the other countries in the region at the same economic level.

After reaching a minimum of 8% between 2006 and 2007, with the Spanish economic crisis that began in 2008 the rate of unemployment grew quickly exceeding 20% in 2010 and 25% in 2012^[1][2] and unemployment became the greatest concern^[3] within Spanish society. Even though unemployment in some regions of Spain is fairly less than in others, the general amount is one of the highest in the European Union and in general has stayed like that independently of the economic situation. Almost 100,000 people have lost their jobs in the real estate industry in Spain.^[4]

Causes

Spain suffers a high level of structural unemployment. From the economic and financial crisis of the 1980s, unemployment has never dipped below 8%. Spain is the OECD country with the highest unemployment rate, ahead of Ireland and Greece. The main causes are an economy based mostly on tourism and building sectors, and lack of industry. The most industrialised region is Basque Country (where industry is around 20-25% of its GDP); its unemployment rate is 2.5 times lower than those of Andalusia and Canary Islands (where industry is only 5-10% of their respective GDP). In the last thirty years the Spanish unemployment rate has hovered around double the average of developed countries, both in times of growth as in crisis. From the start of the crisis of the 1990s, unemployment fell from 3.6 million to two million, but that figure stagnated throughout the good times to the present crisis.

References

This article was adapted from the equivalent Spanish-language Wikipedia article on April 20, 2013.