Spain registered in March 302,265 new job seekers, due to " the extraordinary impact of the Covid-19 health crisis ," the Labor Ministry announced on Thursday.
According to the Spanish press, this increase is the largest ever observed in unemployment statistics. The state of alert and a strict containment were decreed on March 14, slowing economic activity sharply while Spain has the highest unemployment rate in the euro zone after Greece, at 13.8%.
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The coronavirus pandemic " changed the trend in unemployment for the month of March, " said the ministry. During the first twelve days of the month, only 2,857 new unemployed workers were registered. The number of job seekers increased by more than 9%, both compared to February and compared to March 2019.
The service sector pays the heaviest price, with 206,016 additional unemployed, in a country where tourism represents 12% of the GDP, with a large recourse to temporary contracts. All economic sectors are affected: construction (+59,551 unemployed), industry (+25,194) and agriculture (+6,520).
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The shock suffered by the job market is also reflected in the Social Security affiliation figures for those who had signed an employment contract: from March 1 to 11, nearly 65,000 additional registrations had been registered, but from the March 12 to 31, nearly 900,000 unsubscriptions were noted. The number of employment contracts signed in March fell by more than 26% over one year.
The pandemic is likely to make unemployment jump almost everywhere in the world: last week, the United States identified 3.3 million new applicants for unemployment benefits, unprecedented. The number of unemployed in Spain reaches 3.54 million according to the method of calculation of the ministry, different from that of the National Institute of Statistics (INE), which refers. According to the INE, the number of unemployed reached 3.19 million people at the end of December, representing an unemployment rate of 13.78%, a sharp reduction in recent years.
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On Sunday, the government further tightened confinement by ordering the halt until April 9 of all " non-essential " economic activities, a measure targeting construction and industry in particular.
Spain is the second most bereaved country in the world by the epidemic after Italy, with 9053 deaths and more than 100,000 cases according to the latest assessment.