Spain experienced a record drop in unemployment in August, thanks to the reactivation of the tourism sector, heavily affected for months by the covid-19 pandemic.
The number of people registered in public employment offices fell 2.42% compared to July, with 82,583 fewer job applicants, according to the Ministry of Labor.
Compared with August 2020, the fall was 12.33% (468,899 fewer unemployed).
“This is the largest drop in registered unemployment in a month of August of the entire historical series” statistics, which began in 1996, said the ministry, who highlighted the fact that August is a month in which unemployment “traditionally” rises. due to “a decrease in activity in numerous sectors due to the holiday period”.
It is “great news, which confirms that we have overcome the worst of the crisis,” the Labor Minister, Yolanda Díaz, congratulated on Twitter.
According to the ministry, unemployment fell in all sectors except construction.
The most important decrease was in the services sector (46,224 fewer job seekers) dominated in Spain by tourism, on which 13% of jobs depend.
The National Institute of Statistics reported on Wednesday that in July the arrival of foreign tourists to Spain soared compared to 2020 (+78.3%), although it was far from the level of 2019, the last summer before the pandemic.
The figures for August are not yet known, but various actors in the sector have evoked in recent weeks a sustained recovery in activity, especially thanks to domestic tourism, which offset the decline in foreign visitors.
The Minister of Tourism, Reyes Maroto, said on Monday that the creation of more than 244,000 jobs in the sector between July 2020 and the same month of this year “consolidate the recovery of our tourism sector.”
The government has set itself the goal of attracting almost 45 million foreign tourists this year, roughly half the volume achieved in 2019, when Spain was the second largest tourist destination in the world.
But the figures registered so far raise doubts about achieving that goal: In the first seven months of 2021, 9.8 million tourists arrived in Spain, compared to 47.9 million in the same period of 2019.
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