Low unemployment rate
Former crisis country Spain is recording a “historic” job boom
March 4, 2024, 2:27 p.m
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Spain has long been known as the country where young people in particular are desperate to find work. But since the peak of the crisis, the situation has improved significantly. Current figures are also impressive.
In Spain, unemployment fell last month to its lowest level in February since 2008. The number of people registered as unemployed fell by 7,452 to 2.76 million compared to the previous month, as the Ministry of Labor announced. There were fewer unemployed people in construction, but also in service providers, in industry and in agriculture. Spain gained a total of 73,492 jobs in February.
This brought the total number of officially recorded jobs to 20.95 million, according to a separate government report. The Minister of Social Security, Elma Saiz, spoke on television of “historical data”. The psychologically important mark of 21 million jobs is now within reach. Around 47.5 million people live in Spain.
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) forecast an unemployment rate of 11.8 percent for 2023 in its World Economic Outlook Database. The country experienced a sad peak in 2013, when the unemployment rate was around 26 percent, according to the IMF. In the years that followed, however, the situation steadily improved. Before the global financial crisis, the unemployment rate in Spain was at a low of 8.2 percent. For comparison: In Germany it was an average of 5.7 percent in 2023.
Spain, which was considered an economic crisis state for a long time, was one of the economic powerhouses of the euro zone in 2023. Thanks in part to the strength of the tourism sector, the economy grew by 2.5 percent. The government in Madrid assumes that the momentum will continue this year and is targeting an increase in gross domestic product of two percent.