Spain has clawed back half of jobs lost during recession, data shows

The queues at unemployment offices in Spain will be even shorter in 2017.

The upturn in Spain’s fortunes registered in 2016 looks set to strengthen this year, and a particularly pleasing set of statistics has just poured forth from the country’s Labour Ministry showing that Spain has recovered 1.7 million of the 3.5 million jobs lost during the recession…

More than 540,000 Spaniards found work in 2016. This represents the largest annual growth in employment in more than a decade, and is a clear indication of the success the country has made of its post-recession reforms and adaptation to improving economic conditions across Europe.

Labour Minister Fátima Báñez has revealed that the number of Spaniards registered as unemployed in 2016 fell by 390,534 – the highest ever recorded. “This is a year of hope and of confidence,” Báñez said. “There is still a long way to go, but thanks to the efforts of all Spaniards we will continue to create jobs at an intense pace.”

Spain’s recent employment charts are astounding to look at. The number of Spaniards classed officially as employees, ie, those with a social security number, began to dip sharply around 2008, hitting a low of 16.2 million in 2013. The rise since then is encouraging, with 2017 likely to see the number of Spaniards in work surpass 18 million for the first time since the beginning of 2009, which was before the effects of the recession had truly taken hold.

With the economy growing by around 3% last year and forecast to perform just as strongly in 2017, optimism is in rich supply, particularly now that the country’s 10-month-long political deadlock has not only been broken, but installed a government (the PP) that will have to learn to compromise.

And while some sceptics worry that the influence of the centre-left Socialists and the far-left Podemos on the PP means that the types of successful labour reforms instigated in Mariano Rajoy’s last term are unlikely to pass under current government, some economists are confident that further such reforms will be unnecessary.

Indeed, a continuation of the course already charted appears to be the most sensible next step, many agree, with Báñez stating that the PP government is ready to discuss “improvements” to the labour reform, while also promising that there would be no retraction of the law changes implemented, such as making it easier to hire and fire employees.