Unemployment drops in Catalonia in October with 6,322 new jobs

Unemployment dropped in Catalonia in October with 6,322 new jobs created, breaking the uptrend seen over the last three months. Overall, there are 347,996 jobseekers according to data released by the Spanish labor and social economy ministry on Thursday.

This year's figure is the best one seen in the month of October since 2007. Compared to 2021, 29,964 people found a job (-7.9%). 

This is not the first time the unemployment rate drops in October, as it also happened in 2007 and 2021, but 2022 has seen the most significant fall in history.

In October, the number of new workers increased by 0.11% (4,031 people), according to figures from the Spanish inclusion and social security ministry.

"[The high number of jobs created] is proof that Catalonia's labor market is resilient and stable despite the current global context," Enric Vinaixa, Catalan labor secretary, said during a press conference on Thursday.

Overall, there are over 3,617,000 people working in Catalonia.

 

Unemployment drops in Spain

In Spain, there were 27,027 fewer jobseekers in October, a 0.9% decrease compared to September, reaching an overall of 2,914,892 unemployed people.

In this case, it has also registered the biggest descent for the month of October, and compared to the last year, it dropped by 10.5%.

Catalonia was the second Spanish region where the drop has been more significant, just below southern Andalusia (18,736 fewer jobseekers) and ahead of Extremadura (-2,670), and Murcia (-2,359).

Spanish vice president Nadia Calviño welcomed the news as proof of "the strength of the Spanish economy," she told journalists on Thursday morning in the Congress hallways. 

"We have over 100,000 new social security members, a historic descent, youth unemployment is at its lowest, and one out of two contracts are permanent," she added.

"What we are seeing is that the Spanish economy continues to grow and to generate occupation, even in this complex international context," Calviño said.

Youth unemployment increases

Women continue to make up the vast majority of jobseekers, representing 57.4% of the overall number of unemployed (199,873 people). 

While there has been a drop in the number of women out of work, the number of people under the age of 25 in search of work has actually increased by 20,899, going from 5.7% to 6%.

Service industry leads the way

Unemployment figures mainly dropped in Catalonia due to the service industry as it generated 5,460 new jobs, representing 86% of those created.

Over 725 new jobs were created in the agriculture sector, 666 in the construction area, and 250 people found work in the industrial sector.

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 third quarter of 2022, the jobless rate in September 2022 stood at 9.31%. 

There were 365,200 unemployed people at the end of September, which means 61,500 fewer than a year before.