The Diplomat
Unemployment rose by 22.9 percent in Spain throughout 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, putting an end to seven consecutive years of falling unemployment and representing the largest annual increase since 2009, when it rose by almost 800,000 people.
In 2020, 724,532 new unemployed were recorded, bringing the total number of unemployed at the end of the year to 3,888,137, the highest since May 2016. Last December alone, unemployment registered at the offices of the State Employment Service (SEPE) increased by 36,825 people (0.96%) compared to the previous month, the worst figure recorded in December since 2009, in the midst of the financial crisis, according to the latest data from the Ministry of Labour and Social Economy, made public yesterday by the Secretary of State for Labour and Social Economy, Joaquín Pérez Rey.
According to the Ministry, the impact of the pandemic on economic activity has been “an anomaly that has cut short the Christmas campaign”. In any case, he said, the increase in unemployment has been “almost seven times less in the last quarter of the year than in the first wave of the pandemic”. The balance sheet does not include workers who have been suspended from work or whose hours have been reduced as a result of an ERTE, who are not counted as unemployed. At the end of 2020, the number of workers in ERTE was over 755,000, well below the 3.4 million recorded during the peak of the pandemic.
Unemployment increased in 2020 in all sectors, but was particularly high in agriculture (29.2%), services (22.8%), construction (16.1%) and industry (14.6%), joined by workers without previous employment, whose unemployment increased by 35.9%. By gender, female unemployment rose by 21.2% and male unemployment by 25.1%, although the absolute figures indicate higher unemployment among women by the end of 2020, with 2.225 million compared to 1.663 million among men. Furthermore, unemployment among young people under 25 years of age increased by no less than 47.1% in 2020, while that of people over 25 increased by 20.8%.
The rise in unemployment in 2020 was particularly serious in the Autonomous Communities of Andalusia (with 191,503 new unemployed), Catalonia (109,487), Madrid (93,184), Valencia (80,137) and the Canary Islands (61,188).
