Catalonia leads reduction of unemployment in Spain in third quarter

Barcelona (CNA).- Catalonia led the reduction of unemployment in the third quarter of 2016 with a fall of 8.47%. There were 51,100 fewer people unemployed in comparison to the previous quarter and the unemployment rate stood at 14.63% with a total of 552,500 people unemployed, the lowest figure since the fourth quarter of 2008. According to the latest Active Population Survey (EPA), up to 42,700 new jobs were created in the third quarter, the largest figure ever recorded in Spain. Catalonia had 3.2 million employed people, a 3.64% increase over the previous year, and it is the region with the highest number of people in work, ahead of Madrid – with 2.8 million. According to the EPA, unemployment is down and jobs are on the rise in all the four provinces of Catalonia, except in Lleida – eastern Catalonia - where the number of people in employment has fallen.  

The number of people employed in Catalonia in the third quarter stood at 3,223,900, representing about 42,700 people more than in the second quarter, a 1.34% increase. In annual terms, the growth in employment in Catalonia was by some 113,000 people, a 3.63% rise in comparison to last year. This is the largest annual increase registered in absolute terms since the second quarter of 2006, before the crisis.

The services sector was the main engine of job creation, in conjunction with construction. In these sectors, growth in employment was 1.98% and 2.62% respectively, in comparison to the last quarter. The good performance of these two sectors has been constant during the last quarters and has led to respective annual increases in employment of 4.75% and 6.68%.

While these two sectors take a prominent role in job creation, industry broke its upward trend in the third quarter and experienced a 2.22% reduction in employment and a 2.19% fall in annual terms. For its part, the agricultural sector recorded a 9.21% growth in employment compared with June and a 10.63% rise in comparison to the third quarter of last year.

Predominance of temporary jobs in Spain

In the whole of Spain, the number of employed people increased by 226,500 in the third quarter. The total number of people employed stood at 18,527,500. In the last twelve months, employment has grown by 478,800 people in the State, a 2.65% increase. However, most of the employment contracts registered were temporary, 242,600 in comparison to 213,100 permanent ones.

In Spain the number of people jobless stood at 4,320,800, 253,900 people less than the last quarter. With these figures, the unemployment rate in the whole of Spain fell to 18.91%, which represent 1.09 points less than in the previous quarter and a decrease of 2.27 points in the last year.