Month of May sets record for job creation in Spain

More jobs, more confidence: Spain’s economy is on the up

A record 111,916 jobs were created in Spain last month, a superb performance that confounded critics and surprised a number of Spanish and European economists.

After many months of encouraging performance, May saw Spain’s unemployment figures fall drastically, setting a record for the largest fall in jobless recorded in a single month…The usual caveat – that there are still more than 4.5 million Spaniards unemployed (close to 25 per cent of the working-age population) – remains, but these latest figures released by the country’s employment ministry suggest that Spain has not only turned a corner but crossed over to the next block.

Compared to May of 2013, the current job market is 318,543 job roles better off this year, a figure that is close to the entire population of a city the size of Cordoba.

The number of people signing on for Spanish social security was also encouraging, with close to 200,000 people registering – boosted not just by the newly employed but new arrivals to the country from overseas. This was the best monthly figure since 2005, the year that Spain’s property boom really began to take off.

In the first quarter of the year, Spain’s economy grew by 0.4 per cent GDP, which was the fastest recorded quarterly growth since 2008 (before the economic crash) and has been largely buoyed by domestic demand, according to the latest figures published by the country’s National Statistics Institute.

Last week, a study by Real Capital Analytics (RCA) revealed that Spanish property transactions were up 183 per cent this first quarter compared to last year, offering further evidence that many of Spain’s leading industries – real estate, retail, industry – are returning to positions of relative strength.