Registered unemployment in Catalonia continues to fall

The number of registered unemployed workers in Catalonia continues to fall, as it has done each consecutive month since the beginning of the year.

April saw 364,698 jobseekers registered with the social security system, a drop of 6,788 compared with March’s figures.

This is also 26.6% fewer than April 2021, when there were 497,185 people without work, meaning 132,487 new jobs have been created in Catalonia over the past year.

Number of permanent contracts skyrocketing

In April, 220,900 new employment contracts were signed in Catalonia, of which 107,811 have been permanent (49%). 

The number of permanent positions is skyrocketing; such contracts have grown by 240% compared to April 2021 and 15% compared to March 2022. 

In February, Spain's Congress approved the new labor market regulation aiming to limit temporary contracts and increase fines for companies using them in a fraudulent way. 

In the whole of Spain, 3,022,503 people are out of work, 86,260 fewer than in March. 

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 first quarter of 2022, the jobless rate in March 2022 stood at 10.23%, two and a half points lower than a year before: 12.9%. 

There were 394,200 unemployed people at the end of March, which means 105,500 fewer than a year before.