According to INEM – the government work people- after four months of slow job creation, unemployment figures in August suddenly jumped by 61,083, or 1,5% of the total, almost wiping out the job creations of the last four months.
Unemployment in Spain – ie, people who are registered as looking for work or on the dole – now stands at 3,969,661, a tad under the magic four million mark.
Breaking down the figures, we see that the whole thing was, as I had predicted (not that it took any great economic insight), a seasonal trend as the bars hired for the summer. 62% of all the job creation and loss were in the services sector. In other words, nothing that ZP has done over the last few months has made a blind bit of difference.