3,923,603 unemployed people in Spain + 1.4 million on training courses

| 06-01-2010 | Spanish Business | Written by Matthew Bennett

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Shocking unemployment figure for 2009 in Spain – 3,923,603 officially unemployed people. This follows the New York Times’s exposé of Spanish youth unemployment last week, which now stands at 42.9% of young people between the ages of 16 and 24.

Lots of articles in the Spanish press on this awful 2009 Spanish unemployment figure but the one which has most caught my attention is this one in ABC – “3,923,603 unemployed…and another 1,400,000 on training courses“:

The amount of people who are really looking for work at then end of 2009 is more than 5.3 million. The government, however, excludes 1.4 million people from this figure for different reasons – like attending a training course or receiving farming subsidies or the emergency 420 euro unemployment benefit.

So that’s 3.92 million Spaniards who officially are really doing absolutely nothing at all, plus 1.4 million Andalusian and Extremaduran farmers, employment course students and those receiving the 420€ emergency unemployment subsidy who are in very, very dire straits indeed.

What’s more, the ABC article points out that, thanks to Spain’s magnificent autonomous community system with devolved regional powers and responsibilities, the government in Madrid has no idea at all how many people are taking part in any regional back-to-work initiatives which might have been organised in, say, Catalonia or Murcia.

Murcia ended 2009 as the Spanish region where unemployment increased the most – a 34.4% increase in 2009, compared to a 25% average increase in all of Spain.

Not mentioned anywhere in the official figures, of course, is the total number of unemployed people who are actually working somewhere in Spain’s enormous underground economy. If anyone has any good guesses about that figure, say so in the comments.

Finally, there are now 247,741 fewer self-employed people in Spain thanks to the recession.

And there is still no big plan…