Spanish Unemployment Rate Tops 20%
April 27th, 2010
According to the Labour Force Survey (EPA) that the National Statistics Institute (INE) accidentally posted on its website yesterday (final figures will not be made public until Friday), unemployment has increased by 286,200 in the first quarter of 2010, bringing the total number of unemployed to 4.6127 million and an unemployment rate of 20.05%,
The INE said in a statement that “because of an incident” that occurred on Monday, during data validation prior to the release of the results from the EPA, “some data from this survey was temporarily visible on the website” of the statistical agency.
According to the data displayed, the unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2010 is the highest since late 1997, when it stood at 20.11%. The number of people employed in Spain now amounts to 18.3942 million people, representing a decrease of 251.7 thousand compared to the end of 2009.
By sector, only agriculture increased the number of employed persons, by 52,600 (a total of 835,200), meanwhile general industry dropped by 81,100, construction lost another 139,700 and there were 83,600 more unemployed in the service industry.
The Canary Islands, with a rate of 27.68%, is the region with the highest unemployment rate, followed by Andalusia (27.21%), Murcia (23.17), Comunidad Valenciana (23.04), and Ceuta, Baleares, Castilla-La Mancha and Melilla, all with rates above 20%. At the other extreme, the Basque Country has the lowest level of unemployment, at just 10.91%, while Navarra (12.32) and Cantabria (14.49) are also below 15%.
INE sources said that the final figure will be released on Friday, as scheduled in their statistical release calendar and stressed that their process of data validation is still continuing.
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