Spain: Recorded Unemployment Rises By 36,825 In December

Recorded unemployment by the State Public Employment Service (Spanish acronym: SEPE) rose by 36,825 (up 0.96%) in December on the previous month, which shows the impact of the pandemic on economic activity, an anomaly that has cut short the Christmas campaign.

The rise in unemployment is almost seven times lower in the last quarter of the year than in the first wave of the pandemic.

The month of December closed with 3,888,137 people registered as unemployed.

Unemployment by sector

By economic sector, recorded unemployment fell in December in agriculture by 1,311 people (down 0.71%).

Recorded unemployment rose in construction by 18,496 people (up 6.17%), in industry by 9,885 people (up 3.24%), in services by 8,134 people (up 0.3%) and among first-time job-seekers by 1,621 people (up 0.46%).

Unemployment by gender and age

In December, unemployment rose among men by 33,958 (up 2.08%) on the figure for November, to a total of 1,663,016 people, as a result of unemployment rising in more male-dominated sectors, such as construction.

Among women, unemployment rose by 2,867 (up 0.13%) to a total of 2,225,121 on the figure for November.

Unemployment among young people under the age of 25 fell in December by 2,722 people (down 0.74%) on the previous month.

Unemployment by region

Recorded unemployment fell in the Basque Country by 3,196 people and in the Balearic Islands by 991 fewer recorded unemployed in absolute terms.

In contrast, it rose in the 15 remaining regions, headed up by Catalonia (up 12,863 people), Castile and Leon (up 5,019 people) and the Region of Valencia (up 4,030 people).

Contracts

1,355,147 employment contracts were signed in December in total. This figure equates to 78% of the contracts signed in the same month of 2019. Of these, 111,822 were permanent employment contracts, accounting for 8.25% of all contracts.

In terms of the working day, these permanent employment contracts signed in December were divided into 70,488 full-time contracts and 41,334 part-time contracts.