The number of registered jobless in Spain posted a record drop in 2021 as the relaxation of pandemic restrictions boosted its key tourism sector, official statistics showed on Tuesday.
The number of people registered as being out of work dropped by 782,232 last year over 2020 to stand at 3.1 million at the end of December, the labour ministry said. This is the biggest drop since the current statistical series began in 1996 and the lowest number of jobless in the month of December since 2007, it added.
The number of registered jobless fell by 2.4 per cent, or 76,782 people, in December from November – the 10th consecutive month of falling unemployment figures.
“The date once again reflects the progress of Spain’s recovery,” Socialist Prime minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted.
Spain’s tourism-dependent economy contracted by 10.8 per cent in 2020, one of the worst results among industrialised countries. But the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy returned to growth in the second quarter of this year as global tourism picked up.
Before the pandemic hit in spring 2020, Spain was the world’s second-most popular tourist destination after France, and the sector accounted for around 12 per cent of the economy.
Spain welcomed 28.2 million foreign tourists during the first 11 months of the year, 9.9 million more than in the previous year, national statistics institute INE said Tuesday. The Spanish government had hoped to attract around 45 million tourist visits in 2021, approximately half the figure for 2019 before the pandemic hit.
Meanwhile, Germany’s joblessness rate fell slightly in December despite the return of health restrictions to tackle a new wave of coronavirus cases, official figures published on Tuesday showed.
The seasonally adjusted rate dropped to 5.2 per cent from 5.3 per cent the previous month, the BA federal labour agency said, the equivalent of 23,000 fewer unemployed people.
“The recovery seen in recent months continued in December,” agency head Detlef Scheele said in a statement.
In raw figures, the number of unemployed sat just under 2,330,000, down around 378,000 since December 2020.
Unemployment in Europe’s top economy climbed as high as six per cent in the months following the rapid spread of the coronavirus through Europe in the first half of 2020.
Germany has relied heavily on subsidised short-term work schemes to help businesses and workers weather the pandemic storm, with nearly six million Germans placed on reduced hours at the peak of the crisis in April 2020.The scheme was still supporting some 710,000 people according to the latest available figures from October, the BA said.
Germany has relied heavily on subsidised short-term work schemes to help businesses and workers weather the pandemic storm
An uptick in applications made for the short-term work scheme at the end of the year showed the “uncertainty” caused by rising numbers of coronavirus cases and the emergence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant, the BA said.
Around 286,000 people were signed up to the programme in December, up from 104,000 the month before.
The overall improvement in the job market over 12 months was “encouraging” but “the new virus variant will be a difficult test for the German economy,” said Fritzi Koehler-Geib, chief economist at public lender KfW.