Spain unemployment now 5m (22.8%), Highest in industrialised world.

[Troll_Whisperer]

Slimebeast said:

Troll_Whisperer said:

Yeah it's fucked up. Luckily my region has the lowest unemployment at 10% (which is still high, but we're kind of OK), because we didn't base our economy on housing and we have a strong services and industrial sector. We also have manage our own taxes without intervention from the Spanish government which is good.

 

But some areas in Spain have over 30% unemployment!!! Basically, the whole Spanish economy was based on housing, not education or anything useful. Also, 60% of the immigration in Europe was coming to Spain, which meant about 7-8m extra people in 10 years (from 39 to 46m). These people are mostly unemployed now but of course they wouldn't leave the country.

 

Edit: I don't live in Spain BTW, left the country 6 years ago and I'm not coming back any time soon.

I never understood why Spain took so many migrants in such a short time. I think those 7 milion came in only 10 years while Spain still had a relatively high unemplyment (8-12% if you believe EU stats). Can you explain this to me?

The short explanation is that, while unemployment was relatively high at 10% (not that high for Spanish standards BTW), Spain's economy was almost exclusively based on housing, so more and more unskilled people were needed to work for construction companies and such. Therefore the government allowed (or even promoted) millions of unskilled immigrants to come and do the job.

While the bubble lasted the unemployment rates kept going down while those millions of people were coming (down to 7%), meaning Spain was creating a majority of jobs in the whole EU. Once the bubble burst...

The government was incredibly stupid in thinking this would last forever. Even a monkey could see it coming, I saw it coming from miles away, before the crisis hit. Now that these jobs are gone for good, there market is simply not ready to employ people with no skills, education, etc. Even if you do have skills and a good education most of Spain's economy wasn't based on that, so skilled people are leaving the country.

Very, very sad.