Spain unemployment rate drops to lowest for three years

More and more jobs are being created across Spain as the economy recovers.

The unemployment rate in Spain has fallen by 0.2 per cent over the past two months, bringing the current number of jobless down to its lowest level since 2012.

Data from official EU figures shows that Spain has begun to eat into its high levels of unemployment, particularly over the past nine months, during which time hundreds of thousands of Spaniards have found work…

However, despite the jobless rate falling to 23 per cent, Spain remains the second-worst country in the European Union for unemployment, behind only Greece, where 26 per cent of the population is out of work.

Youth unemployment – calculated as those aged 25 or under that are not in any form of education – remains high at 50.7 per cent, but has also fallen by around 0.2 per cent since January. Greece is again the worst in the EU for youth unemployment, with a rate of 51.2 per cent.

In terms of actual numbers, Spain has around 5.3 million unemployed adults, according to data from Eurostat, with around 795,000 of those aged under 25. Across the EU there are 24 million unemployed adults, meaning Spaniards account for 22 per cent of all Europeans out of work.

But the trend has been moving in the right direction since the tail end of 2013. Tough labour reforms have got the job market moving, and the recent fall in unemployment has happened at its fastest pace for more than a decade.

Economists agree that Spain is well clear of recession, and the economy is on course to grow by more than two per cent in 2015. Beyond that, most analysts are bullish that Spain can post sustained growth, and the knock-on effect on employment will be keenly felt shortly afterwards.

Europe-wide, things are picking up, with the rate of unemployment across the EU averaging out at 9.8 per cent – which is the lowest rate since September 2011.

Many Spaniards fled Spain during the past few years to seek work in the UK and Germany, but there are signs that not only has the exodus slowed, but those emigrants have begun to trickle back, tempted home by the promise of a more secure job market and a recovering property industry that is beginning to lend once more.