#SpainUnemployment #EconomicAnalysis #JobMarketAnalysis
If you’ve ever wondered why Spain’s unemployment rate remains stubbornly high despite its prime location, stable government, and well-educated population, you’re not alone. Let’s dive into the factors that contribute to Spain’s high unemployment rate.
## 1. Economic Turbulence 📉
– Spain has faced economic turmoil in recent decades, with fluctuations in the global economy affecting its own stability.
– The 2008 financial crisis hit Spain particularly hard, leading to a dramatic rise in unemployment rates that the country has struggled to recover from.
## 2. Structural Issues 🏗️
– Spain’s labor market is characterized by a high level of temporary contracts, which leads to job insecurity and a lack of stability for workers.
– The country also has a dual labor market, with a stark divide between permanent employees and temporary workers, making it difficult for individuals to find long-term employment opportunities.
## 3. Youth Unemployment 🎓
– Spain has one of the highest rates of youth unemployment in the European Union, with many young people struggling to find stable jobs after completing their education.
– Limited opportunities for career growth and development contribute to this issue, leaving many young Spaniards feeling trapped in a cycle of temporary and low-paying jobs.
## 4. Skills Mismatch 🧩
– Despite having a well-educated population, Spain faces a skills mismatch in its labor market, with many individuals lacking the qualifications and experience required for available positions.
– This mismatch between job requirements and the skills of the workforce contributes to high levels of underemployment and unemployment in the country.
## 5. Demographic Challenges 👴
– Spain’s aging population presents challenges for the labor market, with a shrinking workforce and increased pressure on social security systems.
– An aging population can lead to higher levels of unemployment as older workers struggle to compete with younger job seekers in a rapidly changing economy.
## 6. Government Policies 🏛️
– Spain has implemented various labor market reforms in recent years to address its high unemployment rate, including measures to promote job creation and reduce temporary contracts.
– However, these reforms have faced criticism for their limited impact on overall unemployment levels and the quality of available jobs.
In conclusion, Spain’s high unemployment rate is the result of a combination of economic, structural, and demographic factors that the country has struggled to overcome. While recent improvements in the job market are promising, addressing long-standing issues such as temporary employment, skills mismatches, and youth unemployment will be crucial for sustained economic growth and stability in Spain.
Spain is a country that committed economic suicide by isolation since it’s civil war. Once it came out of its dictatorships, it choose short term profit over long term.
This can be seen on how Spain Focused it’s economy in what ended up being a big bubble in 2008.
As well it’s weather and natural beauty allowed the country to make a lot of easy money off food and tourism. Lately it has become the most touristy country in the planet. This means that employment is highly seasonal and highly unregular, meaning lots of “under the table” payments, that give a false sense of unemployment.
In other words, Spain has invested in a lot of industries that provide disminishing returns and make the country compete with poorer and poorer countries
Part of this is of course economics, but it should be kept in mind that unemployment rates between different countries are not really easily comparable as how exactly people are counted differs a lot.
The devil is often in the details as in many places people who have been unemployed for long enough are not counted and because some countries will send their unemployed to courses where they will count as “in education” rather than unemployed even if they only take the course or seminar because they are unemployed.
Another big part is that official unemployment figures don’t count people who work unofficially and without involving the taxman.
If you work under the table and don’t tell the government about it, then as far as the government is concerned you are still unemployed.
The amount of under the table work people get up to, differs a lot country by country.
As mentioned before Spain mostly relies on tourism and isn’t manufacturing country as not much has a label made in Spain and in there are the jobs
The stats are misleading.
A lot of people which count as “unemployed” in the statistics actually have jobs. Getting unemployment subsidies while working on the side is fairly common. Either straight up 40 hours without contract, or doing trades work “in black”, or semi-legal hustles… there’s a lot of variety, but none of it shows up in the stats.
There is a significant amount of
1) Seasonal work. Some people work 4 months in summer, live the rest of the year with that.
2) Unregistered work. Much of this summer work is done illegally/unregistered, so there is people who work, but are unemployed for statistics purposes.
A guy from Tenerife told me that people qualify for unemployment benefits after they work 9 (or was it 6) months, then they can get payouts for several months. That’s what everyone does, so there’s always a bunch of people who are unemployed by choice. Life there doesn’t cost much.
It’s easy to live low life if you barely have to pay for utilities like heating. And it’s too hot to work anyway.
Id suspect ‘campbells law’ applies heavily to most developed countries unemployment metrics. Politicians use it as a performance gauge so I’d suspect most places unemployment rate is fat higher than reported. Doubly so for the US…
Perhaps Spain is just one of the few that dont manipulate it?
After Columbus discovered the Americas, Spain entered a golden age, riches beyond comprehension were available in the new world. Because of this every Spaniard with an ounce of ambition crossed the Atlantic to seek their fortunes in the land of opportunity. The ones that stayed in Spain were the lazy, the slovenly and those who were content with little.
Charles the V saw this in 1556 when the brain drain was well underway and gave away the Spanish crown as it was becoming nothing more than a burden. After all the talented and competent had left and setup their haciendas in Mexico, the Spanish empire went into a deep decline and has never recovered.
When faced with the threat of Napoleon they were to lazy to do their own fighting and had to have the British do it for them. When one of them set up a fascist dictatorship, they decided to sit out the war that was to decide the future of fascism.
Its a sad story really
The highest % of youth not completing schooling, less emigration than other southern European countries and multi generational households are a few of the factors.
The government joining the euro so thay could have cheap borrowing, doesn’t help manufacturing either, as you’re now trying to compete with Germany rather than running a weaker currency to make up for lower productivity.
if you earn, say, 100 euros self employed every month, or indeed abolutely zero per month, you still owe 225 euros to social security, plus taxes per month.
jobs are harder to find (where I live anyway), and public sector jobs are covered in red tape, often requiring extremely specialized qualifications to perform simple roles.
it’s no secret as to how Spain continues to function despite a seemingly insane level of unemployment – the ‘black money’ market. i.e. undeclared income.
No one really knows. If that were the case they would land a golden job at the Spanish government.
The comment section (and on TV and newspapers) is trying wild guesses, some rooting to the 30s which is nonsense.
I don’t know Spains economy well but I did study economics and unemployment numbers are a measure and it may not tell you what you think.
Unemployment numbers are collect by each country/state( wait I will tell you about the USA). Typically by who is drawing unemployment benefits. So if you draw but also work on the side well numbers are off. If you draw but don’t really plan to work. Same. If you don’t draw and don’t work. Not counted.
Opposite to Spain some USA states make it so hard to draw unemployment benefits that their state calculated number are below reality.
Labor regulations.
Spain has a two tiered labor system. It has really strong protections from being fired or let go from a full time position. This means that full time employment is very difficult to get as businesses are very reluctant to bring on employees they can’t get rid of. This keeps companies understaffed and growing slowly.
To make up the difference employers in Spain use short term contracts. Young people are hired on these short term contracts and are unemployed in between.
There is a very simple explanation for this. Their unemployment benefits usually match or exceed the available salaries. Where it is almost not worth it for many of them to actually work. This greatly inflates the numbers that are receiving unemployment benefits. Therefore, the stats.
It is extremely dangerous for anyone to hire someone under the table. The Hacienda (Spain’s IRS) is really vigilant about that and fines start at €10,000 per employee. So the majority of companies, and even private homes refuse to hire undocumented people. Not that it doesn’t happen, but it is rare. BTW, this kind of activity opens the door for much abuse from employers. Terrible situation.
>Spain’s unemployment rate has been significantly higher than the rest of the EU for decades
This isn’t correct:
2013 Greece 27,4%, Spain 26,7%
2016 Greece 23,1%, Spain 19,2%
2024 Spain 11,7%, Greece 9,2%, Sweden 8%, Finland 7,4%
Something I haven’t seen mentioned yet is the territorial differences. Spain has a strong north/south divide, just like Italy – there’s also arguably a slight east-west, but less so. Unemployment rate in the north is about half that of the south and almost comparable to other European countries (take Catalonia at 9%). Comes down basically to industrialization.
And another point is Spain’s geographical and cultural position. As soon as economy thrives, the geographical proximity with north Africa and the cultural (language) proximity with South America brings enough immigration to keep the unemployment level fairly high.
Purely anecdotal but the places I rented when stationed in Rota were all in the wive’s names. they had multiple properties, some had 9 to 5s. Their husbands took care of the properties, and I know at least one also collected unemployment.
I have no idea how widespread this practice was, but it wasn’t unheard of in that particular town.
Does Spain have generous, by global standards, jobless benefits?
Shitty Economy, because the land is ruled by theifs andcorrupt fascists, that only look for their own asses ignoring that a salary there is ±1000€ and the rent in the cities start from 7-800€.
What are you going to work for, beeing their fucking slave just to don’t have a shit at the end of the month.
And meanwhile everyone is flipping every coin over 3 times, they are still financing some crazy kings that go to shoot elefants during crisis and have stolen millions and millions.
They were put on that place by the spanish dictator, just like if shitler would have won and put a king as his sucessor and he and his family would still be there.
Spanish police has a payment bonus if they reach certain number of tickets they have to do, and if they do less or too much they dont get the bonus, to keep statistics of cryminality like they want, and to get Money obviously.
Politicians during the illegal covid lockdown that they established, lowered salaries and raised the taxes and their own salaries and the salalry of the king.
And shit like that every day, so there is no real reason to go to work for, u’re fucked anyway.
So you go to smoke joints in the park and drink every day to avoid awareness leading to suicide, but still every day someone jumps in front of the subway
That obviously doesn’t appear in the news, just politic propaganda and bullshit TV to keep people dumb and distracted.
Why do u think they invest so much in football? Because it’s a perfect full time distraction and separates people; cities with most political conflicts? Madrid and Barcelona, best clubs Barsa – Madrid, but thats all coincidence maybe…
But they have done so much crazy shit already that people can’t trust anything anymore, like when the protests of Catalonia, were people wanted to go to vote and were brutally punished and injured just for searching democracy, and than they told a different story on the news of the rest of the country and EU.
Everyone who has a bit of value is searching work outside of spain if they are able to, and the rest are mainly npcs who still believe everything they hear on TV were everything is fine and no one talks about like evictions on 80 year old Ladies for having a dept of 88€…
Could keep going but I think its already long enougth, at the end they’ll put me in prison just por telling facts just like the rapper Pablo Hasel 🫥
Edit; Puta españa y Puta el rey.
I lived in spain for 8 years, in tourist spots and madrid for a short while,In the tourist areas anyway, work contracts and paying taxes is a suggestion. i never once had a work contract,almost no one i knew had one, you got paid in cash literally everywhere. all the bars,restaurants and hotels cook the books so they pay whatever amount of taxes they feel comfortable with. only the bosses had legit contracts. in the canary islands or ibiza/mallorca, you can walk around and ask for jobs and you will find one within a day. i dont know what the official unemployment rate is in these areas, but whatever it is, its completely bogus.
even friends in madrid and barcelona say its the same there for all the service sector.
I was in Spain recently. It seemed to have a lot of regulations and a heavy socialist lean. I really loved it there but didn’t own a business or have a job so I don’t know for sure about the regulations but it was the vibe I got. And there was a big communist rally out on the grand via in Madrid. Regulations and socialism are economic headwinds.