More than 620,000 jobs lost due to Covid as unemployment rises to 16%

More than 620,000 jobs were lost due to Covid in Spain in 2020 as the unemployment rises to 16.1 per cent.

THE impact of the pandemic was felt in all economic sectors in 2020, but it mainly affected the service sector, which lost 537,100 jobs.

According to a Labour Force Survey published today, Thursday, January 28, by the National Institute of Statistics, this is the largest increase in unemployment since 2012, accumulating 3.72 million unemployed.

2019 closed with an employment level that touched 20 million employed and an unemployment rate of 13.8 per cent, while 12 months later it remained at 19.34 million (including workers in ERTE).

In this way, the annual rate of job destruction was 3.1 per cent, claims the EPA, which detected that between April and June 2020 more than a million jobs disappeared.

And “there is still a significant part of the employment devastated by the Covid to recover”, it states.

The week before the INE survey was carried out in April, practically half a million workers were affected by ERTE.

In the second quarter of the year, in full confinement, the figure reached its maximum with 3.41 million wage earners with their employment totally or partially suspended.

By age, the number of unemployed increased in all groups, with the greatest increase in the group aged 25 to 54 years, which registered 387,100 more unemployed.

Services and Industry show the largest increases in unemployment, while the number of unemployed who lost their job more than a year ago increased by 197,700 and the number of unemployed seeking their first job by 10,400.

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