Summer’s here – just look at the job market

Busy beaches, busy bars and balmy nights signal summer’s arrival in Spain, and the boost the season delivers to the job market arrives like clockwork.

In Spain, there are a great number of indicators that serve to signal summer’s arrival: the rising mercury, the busy streets, the abundance of relaxed and happy-looking tourists shuffling about the beaches and bars of the Costa del Sol… going by these parameters, summer has well and truly arrived across many parts of Spain (current damp weather excepted, of course!)…

But an even more accurate measure that proves summer is here can be found in Spain’s job market. Seasonal fluctuations mean that unemployment always falls as summer begins. After all, with Spain among the world’s most visited countries, all of those extra millions need good service, right?

This year, the trend has continued, and encouragingly so. Statistics from the Labour Ministry show that in April around 160,000 new jobs were created, with the number of registered unemployed falling by 83,599. Currently, there are slightly more than four million people in Spain registered as unemployed – still high, but that figure has now contracted for more than two years straight as the economy continues to strengthen.

And for all the labour reforms, tax changes, improved real estate sector and wider economic robustness in Europe, Spain’s summer time continues to be one of the most reliable and consistent reasons for things to improve, albeit at a slightly slower pace this year than last, when more than 175,000 new jobs were created in April 2015.

According to the data, the strongest sectors remained hospitality, manufacturing and administrative activities.