Which professions are empty? Even with 3 million unemployed in Spain

unemployed in spain

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With three million currently unemployed in Spain, there are still some professions facing staff shortages.

Spain currently holds an unemployment rate over double the European average. According to Servicio Público de Empleo Estatal (SEPE) data published in the last week, 13.7% of people are without work. While this number of unemployed in Spain has been decreasing, with the rest of Europe averaging just over 6%, it is still comparatively high.

Over 57,000 people registered affiliation to social security over the last month, meaning job roles are continuing to be filled. Even with those figures bringing registration to 19.3 million people, in some sectors they are struggling to get any candidates at all.

This paradox of unemployed people versus unfilled roles is currently playing out in the UK, so we are able to see what may come to pass in Spain in the near future. Britain is feeling the pinch especially in the transport sector, from which over half its workforce are from Europe. The worry is that Christmas will be severely affected if this is not resolved.

In Spain, however, the main instances of staff shortage are in the hospitality and agriculture sectors. These physically hard jobs, with low pay and sometimes precarious working conditions, are avoided by highly qualified candidates even if no other job is available. Immigrant labour also accounts for many of the workers in these roles, and the pandemic has bottlenecked the visas and travel needed to fulfil those positions.

Now that Brexit has taken full effect, something similar is happening in the UK. With no foreign labourers coming in from the EU, business sectors that usually rely on those employees, such as logistics, cleaning, etc. are starting to feel the pinch. Although, in Spain the imbalance between people and position is thought to be temporary. With the travel, tourism, and hotel industries beginning to operate almost at normal capacity again, the government is hopeful that the situation will be resolved as soon as possible.

The worries will then turn to the job roles of the future. The world is becoming more digitised every day, and there will be many people needed to carry this on. The labour needed for these processes is highly qualified, and Spain will need to move with the times to meet demand. The US and other advanced countries are already dealing with staff shortages in these areas, so again, Spain can look to others to try and avoid these problems in the coming years.


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