It’s official – one out of every four Spaniards of working age is now unemployed. Basically, that’s the highest level of any country in the developed world.
In the last quarter, 96,000 jobs were destroyed, leaving just 17.320.300 people in employment.
And three out of every four people who lost their jobs did so in Andalucía, as the unemployment level in the region approaches 1,5 million people (we’ve only got 8 million people, for God’s sake).
The government has shrugged, said that a number of the job losses were from the public sector, says it doesn’t expect unemployment to accelerate, but also doesn’t expect it to start dropping until at least the end of 2013. So no false hope there, then.
By Andalucian provinces (from the El Mundo report):
Por provincias, la tasa de paro más elevada se da en Jaén (39,13 % y 115.200 desempleados), seguida de Almería (38,44 % y 143.700 parados), Córdoba (37,75 % y 141.400 personas en paro), Granada (37,19 % y 161.700), Huelva (36,19 % y 89.200), Cádiz (36,03 % y 211.500), Málaga (33,07 % y 262.900) y Sevilla (32,63 % y 298.600).