Title says it all, really. There are now 5,6 million unemployed people in Spain, out of which 1,329,600 are Andalucian – or 33.17%.
To put it another way, if you put three Andalucians in a row, one of them won’t have a job.
Across Spain, there are an estimated 1.728.400 households in which not one member draws a salary. In the first three months of the year, 365,900 people lost their jobs.
Meanwhile, the Unicaja thinktank has warned that it can’t see any job creation coming to Andalucia until mid 2014 at the earliest, and warns that unemployment will continue to rise in the region.
The number of unemployed people reached 5,639,500 at the end of March, with the unemployment rate hitting 24.4%, the national statistics agency said.
The figures came hours after rating agency Standard & Poor’s downgraded Spanish sovereign debt.
Official figures due out on Monday are expected to confirm that Spain has fallen back into recession.
Other figures released on Friday showed that Spanish retail sales were down 3.7% in March from the same point a year ago, the 21st month in row sales have fallen.