Registered unemployment down in February, bucking trend of four months rising
Number of people registered without work in Catalonia down by 700 in second month of the year
Registered unemployment fell in February for the first time in five months in Catalonia.
The number of workers registered without jobs fell by nearly 700 people and stood at 346,373 in February.
After four months on the rise, the total number of unemployed has fallen by 0.2% compared to January.
There were 4,915 fewer people registered with employment services compared to last year (-1.4%), and this is the lowest amount in a month of February since 2008, when there were 290,912 people registered out of work.
In the second month of the year, 23,637 jobs were created, an increase of 0.64% after three consecutive months of decline.
The total number of contributors to social services has climbed to 3,698,533 people, another record for the historical series in this month.
Two ways of calculating unemployment
The figures differ from those from the latest Labor Force Survey (EPA in Spanish), which is published every three months. The variation in the figures can be attributed to the different methods for gathering data.
The work ministry figures, published in this article, are based on the number of jobseekers registered with the Employment Service, while the EPA figures are taken from surveying a broad sample of 65,000 households, or some 200,000 individuals, all over Spain.
According to the latest EPA, showing figures for the last quarter of 2023, the jobless rate in December 2023 stood at 8.97%.
There were a total of 366,300 people unemployed in Catalonia according to that method, the lowest for this period since 2007. Compared to the previous year, there were 20,900 fewer people unemployed, a drop of 5.4%.