Unemployment rate in Spain 2023, by age group
An ongoing and tough recovery
Spanish unemployment rate skyrocketed in 2008, jumping from eight percent in the first quarter that year up to 17.24 percent during the same quarter a year after. The Spanish unemployment crisis hit hardest in 2013, when a record high of 27 percent of the population did not have a job. In numbers, that share translates into 6.3 million professionals in 2013 left out of the workforce. The job market initiated a recovery thereafter, making moderate and laborious progress and reducing the numbers to approximately 3.1 million unemployed workers in the first quarter of 2023. The impact of the coronavirus on the Spanish economy caused the unemployment rate to surge again throughout 2020, but still remained far from the figures reached after the financial crisis.
The unemployment situation in the European Union
Spain was the European country with the highest unemployment rate in August 2023, with 11.5 percent of the labor force out of work. The unemployment rate in Greece, in second place, stood at a rate of 10.9 percent in that timeframe, which is still considerably higher than that of the rest of the European Union.