Unemployment rate in Madrid from Q1 2013 to Q3 2023
An ongoing and tough recovery
Spanish unemployment rate skyrocketed in 2008, jumping from a stable 9.6 percent in the first quarter of 2008 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 left out of the workforce. The job market initiated a recovery thereafter, making moderate and laborious progress and reducing the numbers to approximately 11.6 percent of the active population in the third quarter of 2023.
The unemployment situation in the European Union
Unemployment rate in Spain is considerably higher than that of the rest of the European Union, which stood at a rate of 6 percent in October 2023. During that same period, Spain overtook Greece as the European country that featured the highest unemployment rate . Youth unemployment figures in the European Union looked slightly less optimistic, with figures reaching 16.9 percent at the beginning of 2021.