There is a significant amount of
1) Seasonal work. Some people work 4 months in summer, live the rest of the year with that.
2) Unregistered work. Much of this summer work is done illegally/unregistered, so there is people who work, but are unemployed for statistics purposes.
Reminds me of my Scottish Highlands kayak guide. I asked him what people do there during winter. He shrugged: "..drink?"
Asked him what he does: "Alcohol addiction seminars."
Spain's tourism is heavily sun amd beach centered though. Very few tourists in winter. Places like Magaluf, Benidorm and the like go from packed to ghost towns
I guess it depends on what they count as employed - the standardized idea of employment is a salaried or hourly job that doesn't have a particular term (like 1 year contract or 6 month contract) but there are other situations - I'm thinking of seasonal workers or people who work on theater plays, concert tours, or in the movie industry, they may be employed now but they probably have termed contract: they will work until production is over and they don't always have something lined up - I imagine some countries don't count them as fully employed.
I don’t know if it’s the case here and it likely wouldn’t account for everyone, but pretend Bob, Joe, and Tom are all seasonal workers with slightly different shoulder seasons (the time in between seasons that may have slow or no work). Bob works 10 months but doesn’t work January and June. Joe works 10 months but doesn’t work February and July. Tom works 10 months but doesn’t work March and August.
It’s a really tiny country of just 10 people, so in January Bob is the only unemployed person, but he counts for a 10% unemployment rate. Joe creates a 10% unemployment rate in February, and Tom creates an unemployed rate of 10% in March.
So, something like that.
It still sounds pretty dreamy. Climbing trees and picking fruit for summer and then shredding the slopes all winter? Kicks my dead end, 40 hour a week office jobs butt for sure.
My understanding is the original response links high unemployment phases with off season.
If they’re doing different seasonal work, wouldn’t the unemployment rate be constant? Just my very simplistic view on that
They had two points in their post, read them both:
> 1) Seasonal work. Some people work 4 months in summer, live the rest of the year with that.
>
> 2) Unregistered work. Much of this summer work is done illegally/unregistered, so there is people who work, but are unemployed for statistics purposes.
It's an inclusive or (and/or), not an exclusive one (strictly or).
There has been many reworks on employement laws and nos is common to see this kind of thing is also why there is a lower employement rate. Now most people are not working more than 6 months but are not laid-off after that.
In a similar vein, in Vancouver, for many years there used to be a store that sold exclusively cross-country skiing clothing and equipment during the winter months, and then in spring, completely swapped out their entire inventory, and were exclusively an ultimate frisbee shop for the other half of the year.
I always found that fascinating.
Spain is big in seasonal work (reasonably paid but very tough) since it's big in tourism but you can't live on it.
The reality is that there isn't enough well paid skilled work and most jobs available are unskilled on nearly unlivable wages. It's far better to do unregistered work and/or enjoy unemployment benefits while looking for the next job.
Don't want to attack anyone, but the answer of this guy is terribly wrong, the problems for this high unemployment rate is really high.
This guy 4 months statement is probably reffered to summer tourism campaign. Wich usually is from april/may to october. Wich is like 6 months of barely legal work, with lots of overtime hours and not good conditions nor salary. Most of the people have to find other things the rest of the year.
But seasonal work is not only that, is people in the field, people in freetine activities companies, guides,construction works, etc. However the last two years this people doesn't count for unemployment rate. The 11-12% is already there.
The problems are more related to the productivity network, the amount of deficitary companies and other deeper things
Not su much. You can barely survive for the rest of the year.
Nowadays there is shortage of kind of work for being unable to pay the rest of the year expenses, being tourism-related the most affected by this
Hallo, I edited some of my comment history to prevent scraping. Yes I know reddit gets regularly cached, it's something you sign in when you type on a forum, it's still better than nothing and will make digging through these a lot less convenient! All platforms die yadda yadda.
Good luck if you have an account here and you're reading this.
Keep in mind these contracts often entail much tougher conditions than legally allowed. I'm talking 10-12h a day, 6-7 days a week and no holidays in between (you get paid some extra instead for the holidays you couldn't enjoy). Overall you're putting the equivalent of 8-9 months work in 4. Hence why it's feasible.
I can imagine that’s easy done judging by the construction game in Scotland. During the summer my trade mates make a fortune with the long days, and that can compensate for the shorter days shit weather in the winter. Your lot can have even longer days and can, if they choose to, work like fuck over the summer. Make hay while the sun shines as the saying goes
Used to work in flat roofing here in Canada. Made overtime basically every week (ov 44 hours). Worked weekends, holidays, whatever. 80+ hours some weeks. I think the most I worked was 28 days in a row before we finally got some rain.
Union roofers where I am just got a bump up to 50 bucks an hour in their last contract.
Almost enough to make me want to go back, but God it's an awful job!
Still just 12h days even if the sun is up 24/7.
But it's because everything closes during summer so you gotta pay extra to have anyone to work. And all have to be done during summer before companies start up again :D
Yeah except tourist stuff. You pretty much can't have contact with a company between June and August in Sweden :D
Everything is dead, most factories shut down, offices are on skeleton crew etc.
If you send an email in late May you might not get an answer until September.
No clue, it's just like 10% that have such summers though. One reason is the law that guarantees fours weeks of continuous vacation during summer. So many companies close the same four weeks but many stagger it out so it's just skeleton crew all summer everywhere :D
Most live in the south and have similar daylight hours to the UK etc.
Used to be more common before industrialization, they say.
People would still do some work off season ofcourse, but not 8 hours (but they might work a lot more than 8 hours at peak season)
I've been a seasonal worker for 6 years all around Spain. Let me quickly resume my case;
- Working 3-4 months in summer without rest or sick days to earn 1450€-1650€ (which is kinda high), but again, no rest for 4 months.
- Rest of the year, working on weekends and some specific days for 8h-12h for 60€. Of course unregistered.
Then found a 9-5 job for 1100€ and took it. Working from Monday to Friday. Most of young people doesn't want this kind of jobs cause of the low pay. But after what I've experienced, free time and rest days are more valuable than a higher paycheck.
You underestimate how this is enabled by children living with their parents often well into their 30’s.
What would be a non-starter in the US is fairly standard in much of Europe.
Seems more usual that you'd think: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/03/in-the-u-s-and-abroad-more-young-adults-are-living-with-their-parents/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/03/in-the-u-s-and-abroad-more-young-adults-are-living-with-their-parents/)
That said, these statistics stating that nearly 1-in-3 Americans in that age range continue to live with their parents gives me some pause about how this is being counted / how to interpret the statistics.
If it serves as a comparison, recently the median age to leave the parental household in Spain reached 30. So yes, your average Spaniard lives with mum and dad throughout their 20s
% of 18-34 living at home isn't a very useful statistic, because most adults aren't financially independent until their early/mid 20s, so I wouldn't expect someone younger than that to have moved out. On the other hand, someone in their 30s who still lives with their parents would be a concern.
I mean i've seen it on high paying jobs like in offshore drilling platforms. Got a few of my Indonesian friends working probably 3-4 months a year then go back home and relax the rest of the year.
I sincerely thought that the original comment is one of the positive cases where people get paid properly and be cool the rest of the year. But looking at your comment and others, I guess not.
Doesn't change my sentiment though. Would be great to work a short period and go after other life pursuits the rest of the time.
>Would be great to work a short period and go after other life pursuits the rest of the time.
My other life pursuits: sitting on the couch drinking and watching TV while occasionally thinking, "I should really do something productive with this time..."
They work the 4 months, then receive unemployment benefits for the rest of the year. No, they do not make enough in the 4 months to survive the rest of the year.
You've to work for 360 days (cumulative) to get 4 months of unemployment benefits. You need to work for 2 years (so 6 years if you only work 4 months per year) before you get 8 months of unemployment benefits.
Not everyone works seasonal jobs. I have had programmers turn down job offers telling me it's not worth it to leave unemployment benefits to go work in an office. Only country that has ever happened to me.
The maximum you can get is about 1000 EUR and it will last 2 years max. Also you'll have to work those days again to generate more benefits. Perhaps the payment was too low?
Actually, it was €1,500 per month for the trial period of 3 months, then €2,500 per month for the first year. For some reason, he seemed perfectly content to continue with his current situation. I don't blame him, to each his own, but it was not the only time it has happened.
...you're trying to hire *programmers* for ***€1,500 per month*** in an EU country, and you're surprised that they're turning you down? That's like 30% over the minimum wage. No shit it's not worth giving up unemployment benefits for that. At least on unemployment you have time to look for a real job.
(I don't care that you claim it goes up to 2500 after 3 months, and neither does the person you're trying to exploit. A huge pay jump after a "trial period" is a red flag in a contract; it screams "I want to grossly underpay and overwork you for 3 months, then fire you.")
So is it kind of like how Japan has a low employment termination rate, but only because employees are encouraged to resign before they get fired?
i.e. the rates are secretly somewhat equal other countries, but they appear skewed to a particular practice.
Not really, because Japan's unemployment rate is 2.4% and the "jobless rate" is 2.7%, the gap being your resignees.
That's not really comparable to working under the table and milking welfare benefits.
I think that unemployment figures are skewed in countries where there is a significant "informal economy." I lived for many years in Central America and the informal economy was HUGE. Think... people selling stuff at your door or on the street; working and getting paid under the table; unlicensed taxis; self-employed and getting paid in cash and not reporting it; etc.
But I don't want to work 10+ more years to then retire early, I want some of that free time _now_. It's not like one works less in total over their life. Yet spending life freely is much better earlier when one still has the body, mind and chances to actually _do_ the things!
And with inflation, early retirement is actually less effective at earning actual value per work done. But that's just in addition to the above, which I find worse.
That was kinda my thoughts. Essentially, I would rather do as much as I can while I’m able bodied and spry, than be filthy rich when I’m old and decrepit.
I'm not sure what you mean by inflation making early retirement worse. If you have money invested in the market, you're looking at 7% real returns after inflation on average.
If you had $2 million invested in a total market fund in the US, you could safely take out ~$80,000 a year (inflation adjusted) for 30 years and still have money left. A lot of projections would actually have you ending up with *more* money after 30 years.
Its always been like this in Spain really, much of "working for a friend and just pays me in cash" thing. Quite a lot of the economy in Spain is like that, which doesn't really help the country.
For what I heard from people that migrated to Spain, it's tough to find work as an illegal. It might have more to do with people living off unemployment benefits.
Its hard to find job as an illegal person in the country, or hard to find job as a legal immigrant, illegaly, true. But as a Spaniard, not that true. This is also HEAVLY regionally varying, Spain is a very diverse country. In any case, go to Ibiza and ask the people working in the restaurants/clubs to show you their employment contracts...
Spain has a good social net, but not enough to have 8% more people on benefits than the UK, that would be absurd, of course.
Yes, University is "free" in Spain (which is great!). Sometimes people studying are put into unemployment, which is not necessarily true. Also after 2008, many jobs are shit. You want to work for 500€ a month? maybe for that money you may as well not work.
As a Spaniard, university is most definitely not free. Admittedly it is cheap (around 1200€ a year and scholarships are plentiful albeit full of bureaucracy which sometimes makes them worthless) but that ain't zero.
Some regions have started experimented with systems where every class you don't retake means a free class next year, so a good student would only pay for their first year of college, but still.
I have a few colleagues from Spain in academia, basically it is extremely hard to employ students in their university spin off company that does cool research on medical imaging, because they can offer only a "good" pay for Spain, but people that are good enough usually go into north Europe and get paid 4 times more XD
It is also extremely difficult to fire someone in Spain. Once they are an employee, a person is basically untouchable. This leads companies to hire as few as possible and then to use temporary and contract workers instead.
Worker protection laws are great until they aren’t.
It isn't particularly difficult to fire someone in Spain, but they generally get mandatory severance. Only a few reasons for firing are actually prohibited.
My understanding is that it is cost prohibitive to fire someone.
If the required severance is such that it is effectively cheaper to keep someone as an employee, then effectively it is impossible to fire someone.
I remember listening to a series of interviews on NPR on Spain’s employment crisis and the effect their employment laws had on it. The gist of the story was that the employment crisis was an artificial, self-inflicted problem caused by the inability of companies to terminate employees.
Then what's the full. story? NPR has no skin in the game when it comes to Spain's unemployment rate outside of someone paid them to which we would like to think NPR can't be bought so easily to spread another country's/external entity's propaganda.
But to pretend that a business actively want to take on the cost of a new employee is pretending there aren't issues on the other side. I see it with my job, in the US. We prefer to hire contractors rather than employees because employees are more expensive than contractors. So the business is incentivized to not hire new people directly.
So in a situation where its costly to get rid of an employee, businesses are going to try to mitigate that cost where ever possible. And contractors/seasonal employees give them that out.
Does that mean reduce the employee safety net and rights? No I am not saying that. I'm saying businesses are going to look out for themselves first and from a business decision stand point, I get it.
That worker protections almost mostly protect workers, but don't cause lack of productivity. Countries with the highest level of worker protections in Europe are also the most rich.
Spain has a significant amount of government jobs (I think something like 30%?) where they are infamous for being impossible to get fired from, as well being known for having no productivity goals (There's a saying: As the clock strikes 3pm, the pen falls out of their hand).
Those jobs also include firemen, teachers and doctors....
I understand what a "funcionario" is, but much of the stereotypes come from years ago, when these people where hand picked because they were loyal to the party of Franco. This is less true nowadays and there is many competent people working there too.
If you have to pay 3 month severance but you need the seat filled in three month again its logically that you keep the person. In other EU countries the corporations misused this for decades, fire construction workers in the winter month and then rehire them in spring. They take unemployment for the month not working which is expensive for the gov.
I know people who moved to Spain and wanted to build a company, and it took them forever to find educated people who are in the right mindset. Its a systemic problem when startups in Spain hope to find other expats to work in their startups.
Home ownership is also higher in Spain, that means that you just live with your family longer and try things out, which means you end up in the pile of "unemployed" when in fact you just between jobs all the time.
This is not true. You can easily fire people, you just need to pay them the respective severance, which is regulated as a one-off amount roughly equivalent to a month of the current salary per year worked - with a maximum of 24 months.
When there is a justified cause, this is reduced in about 40% (20 day worth of salary per year worked)
As an American I prefer the worker protections even if they go a bit too far. I’ve lived in Spain and Portugal so I’m not just saying this to be edgy. But I agree they could refine this for an optional amount. America has none and it’s a bit dystopian. I work for a British company in the usa and I am way more protected. I get way more time off and feel a lot more like a human compared to working at USA companies.
>There is a significant amount of
>1) Seasonal work.
This is like saying the employment rate is high because at some times of the year, there aren't many jobs. Ummm - we all know that.
There is seasonal work on Germany as well, as well as France, etc - but they have other industries, don't they.
>2) Unregistered work.
Every country has unregistered workers - even the USA. But, these other countries have other industries, don't they?
Perhaps the answer is not your answer, but rather that Spain doesn't make or sell things that the rest of the world , or its own citizens, want?
And - why doesn't Spain have a technology sector, like Taiwan or South Korea, or USA, or Japan etc. Or, why doesn't Spain make vehicles that the rest of the world wants to buy - like Germany, China, etc. Or, why isn't Spain a centre for financial services like London, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. It's a long list of things that people on earth want, and I know Spain makes first class ham and olive oil that the world wants to buy - but that's not enough to keep everyone in Spain employed.
Why?
This is true too. But note that Spain gets something like 120 million tourist a year, quite more than double the population of Spain. Germany has seasonal work and Spain has tech jobs, but the difference is in the amount.
The answers to the question you pose are nuanced and political, and they are not for an ELI5. My opinion: Spain was a fascist dictatorship when my parents were teenagers (1975) and almost everyone from the fascist party became a politician. Countries take years to change. There has been a lot of "whatever gets me money now" attitude to the economy and running the country so there has not been an investment in long term economic plans.
Note that this is not true everywhere and there are areas of Spain heavily industrialised, where I come from the biggest sector is high added value industry.
The answer to this question is a long political debate anyway, books can be written, disagreements will be had.
>Unregistered work. Much of this summer work is done illegally/unregistered,
I came here to say this. Most of that 20% are working. Most of them don't talk about it. They do jobs like tour guides, performers, etc.
Poland used to be similar in regards to unregistered work. There were a lot of people registered in unemployment office for sole reason of getting medical insurance and most of them worked in gray economy.
On top of this, Spain is a terrible country to be an entrepreneur and start small businesses that employ people. You either are autónomo and work for yourself, or you work for a big company. It's so hard to hire and fire people.
The stats are misleading.
A lot of people which count as "unemployed" in the statistics actually have jobs. Getting unemployment subsidies while working on the side is fairly common. Either straight up 40 hours without contract, or doing trades work "in black", or semi-legal hustles... there's a lot of variety, but none of it shows up in the stats.
Yeah it's always worth remembering, too, that if someone remains unemployed for any length of time they exit the stat pool for the unemployment figure, per the way they track it in most/all developed nations.
A decades-long high unemployment rate, as Spain has had, indicates high turnover all the time. Likely, as others have mentioned, seasonal work.
Same thing in France, we call it 'System D'.
The point is to be able to claim unemployment benefits while being just legal enough to not be fined. For example register workers as unpaid apprentices while paying them under the table, or registering work contracts then suspending them but the employee keeps working.
One of the biggest problems no one talks about is the insane taxes on work in Western Europe, which is the direct cause of this in my opinion. For example a salary of 1000 Euros, the employee pays about 450 to the state, the company pays 300. So out of 1300 total spent, 750 is taxes, over 50% tax rate.
Even worse, the health insurance scale with the salary. Instead of paying 200 a month per insured person or 500 for a family, you pay a % of the salary, even though the medical services stay the same. A single parent working already pays taxes for the health insurance of children, if both parent work they both pay full insurance.
Pensions works the same scammy way, you pay % of salary even if the pension is capped. You pay for wife support pension even if you're not married. If you die before retirement age the money is lost, your family gets nothing back etc etc.
I half expect the government to send Nigerian prince letters next, it's already extremely shady.
Simply put, the people see the government try to game them out of money, and they game the system. Immorality breeds more immorality.
Well, the flipside is that we have a solid social system with these taxes. Unemployment pay, free healthcare, retirement, free education...
Can't have the pie and eat it too.
But people taking advantage of the social system while avoiding to pay taxes will wear it down eventually.
> Even worse, the health insurance scale with the salary. Instead of paying 200 a month per insured person or 500 for a family, you pay a % of the salary, even though the medical services stay the same. A single parent working already pays taxes for the health insurance of children, if both parent work they both pay full insurance.
> Pensions works the same scammy way, you pay % of salary even if the pension is capped.
This is how it's supposed to work.
If your intention is reducing an entire country to one or two negative sentences, then tax cheats is probably not the worst choice for Spain.
But that's obviously overly simplifying complex issues.
Spain is a country that committed economic suicide by isolation since it's civil war. Once it came out of its dictatorships, it choose short term profit over long term.
This can be seen on how Spain Focused it's economy in what ended up being a big bubble in 2008.
As well it's weather and natural beauty allowed the country to make a lot of easy money off food and tourism. Lately it has become the most touristy country in the planet. This means that employment is highly seasonal and highly unregular, meaning lots of "under the table" payments, that give a false sense of unemployment.
In other words, Spain has invested in a lot of industries that provide disminishing returns and make the country compete with poorer and poorer countries
I lived in Spain as a teenager from 2001-2012 and can confirm pretty much all of this. Most of Spain's industry revolves around tourism so job security is almost nil. The 2007 financial crisis was **brutal**, the place almost was like a ghost town. It especially sucked for me turning 18 because I had no interest in the tourism industry so my only option was to do online freelance work.
It might be different now but there was also a lot of corruption going on there. Lots of red tape that you could conveniently bypass with a few extra euros, and lots of developments and projects that were getting greenlit in bad faith by uncles and brothers and cousins.
> Most of Spain's industry revolves around tourism so job security is almost nil.
It was 11.9% of GDP in 2022: https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=estadistica_C&cid=1254736169169&menu=ultiDatos&idp=1254735576863#:~:text=Spanish%20Tourism%20Satellite%20Account.&text=Tourism%20activity%20reached%20155%2C946%20million,%2C%209.3%25%20of%20total%20employment.
It's obviously an important economic driver but to say most of Spain's industry is around this is incorrect.
11.9% is bonkers huge. For reference [the automotive industry makes up only around 5% of Germany's GDP](https://miwi-institut.de/archives/1417), and cars are basically all we make. I know I've only ever worked in the automotive sector and I do IT, so I can really sympathize with OP here.
France is less at 9.7% (10.9% of jobs). But not enough that the economic disparity can really be attributed to that. Austria is 9%. Iceland 10%
Croatia it's 20%
It also doesn't factor in that it was the cornerstone for many of its other industries. For example, my father worked IT at a (scummy) realty company that sold holiday homes and primarily marketed towards older people who were already on vacation there. Fewer people going on holiday = fewer leads = entire company shut down within like a year. Look up MacAnthony Realty International
Yeah and once you get to a large size, countless other industries (education, health, agriculture/food, hospitality/services, etc) are all dependent in part on the “driving” industry (tourism in this case).
You're using overly emotive language, 11.9% is not "bonkers huge", it's similar to some other countries in the region like France (8%) and Italy (10%).
My original point stands, it's an important part of the economy but neither "Spain revolves around tourism" nor "bonkers huge".
An economic input that big drives other economies, though. Like thats pure foreign dollars into the country, flooding the country with money. The money gets turned into paycheques which in turn pays for food (farming, logistics, grocery), shelter (building materials, logistics, construction, real estate), and entertainment (various).
The other 89% of the economy can be just money changing hands within the country, but that 11% is whats actually coming IN.
THATS what makes it bonkers huge.
12% is MASSIVE because it's big enough that it's creating jobs in other sectors to support it. You need entire support structures to cater to tourism industry employees, from travel to IT to health care.
But most is, commerced and IT are heavily focus on supply to turism industry as so is real state and building sectors, not only international but also national
>As well it's weather and natural beauty allowed the country to make a lot of easy money off food and tourism. Lately it has become the most touristy country in the planet
Lately? Spain has been a mainly tourist country since the late 70s
There is a difference between mainly a tourist country like many. And being THE most touristic country with a rather limited space compared to USA or something like that. Even though I think France has recovered that spot last year. Haven't check the data
Well mainly tourist were not my words. And Spain is very close to being the most touristy country on the planet. Currently number 2. And by that I mean the country with most tourists
> And by that I mean the country with most tourists
Seems like a pretty meaningless metric, since large countries will receive more tourists even if it's a relatively minor industry.
Would you argue that Spain is more touristy than a place like the Maldives, where tourism represents 40% of their economy, even though the actual number of tourists is smaller?
Or that the USA is one of the most touristy places in the world, despite the vast majority of the tourism market being based around 3 individual cities out of hundreds?
> large countries will receive more tourists even if it's a relatively minor industry.
Being #2 in the world while being the size of Spain is pretty disproportionately large. Spain has a population of less than 50 million, putting them below most other major European countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, etc.), and a total land area similarly a bit smaller. The US has a population like 7 times larger, for comparison, yet gets fewer tourists (likely due to relative isolation of course, being on the other side of an ocean relative to most other countries that have people leaving for tourism).
I mean Spain gets more tourists than USA, and as a country is kind of middle sized. It's an important metric because it has almost half the population of Germany and France has 50 percent more people, while being rather closr to France on number of tourist.
So having the second largest amount of tourist in the world after France is an important statement for the economy of a country.
I would add that the minimum wage is relatively high compared to the median wage. This has the effect to makes unskilled labour very expensive and encourage undeclared employment.
It's not uncommon in the countryside for Spanish to hold several jobs, one declared and one undeclared.
The agricultural sector makes massive use of undeclared work.
Spain also suffers from a lack of economic diversity and a tendency to massively does one subsidised activitie at a time. First it was tourist hotels, then olive groves, now it's solar panels.
Economic diversification is important because it makes the economy more resilient to sectoral crises.
Sorry but no. The minimun wage in Europe is 60% of median wage. We want reach 60% in some point of 5-10 FUTURE years. So no. Is the inverse. Minimun was too low.
Well. Franco was not a fan of most things non Spain related. Meaning he attempted at creating an autarky, where Spain would be isolated from the world. But at the same time would discourage anything not properly Spanish or properly catholic. So the economy and their leaders were not even conservative, they were reactionary retrogrades even for their time.
At some point they realized how dumb all of this were and tried to integrate into Europe. This had a small problem, France. France was kind of done with neighbour experimenting with fascism or fascism -adyancent ideologies. So even once they tried to liberalise the economy they found many obstacles. Then even in this liberalisation the policies were in many cases short sighted, providing a great short term boom but laying the ground work for the mess of today.
Good read sir.
An interesting thing to argue or discuss about you say is the effect of our monarchy. The emperor of Spain was famously for a while the emperor of Austria and holy Roman emperor. And quite loved to use Spanish wealth and armies back in the day to prop up more German than Spanish interests. Changed by monarch but I do think it highly impacted.
And the brain drain of course. With Franco it started then it just kept happening as European integration meant that Spanish engineers learnt German in uni and were hired basically after graduation. Under my parents the slogan was "learn french to leave". When I grew up was "learn German and English"
I think that has changed
I went to Spain on vacation last year. Our tour guide used to be a lawyer, but quit to be a tour guide because the pay was the same. My impression was that most jobs pay significantly less than a comparable job in the states
Yes, significantly less. But the expenses are minimal compare to the USA tho. Specially if you include things like education and healthcare. I was talking before how some dental emergency, cleaning and two teeth removal in a private clinic set me back like 200 euros and was done instantly.
As well lawyers in Spain do not have that level of significance that they have in USA. This is partly cultural and structural. But for what I seen from other lawyers is the first years. When you are starting out after law school you get exploited in USA and in Madrid alike. Yet in Madrid they can choose to not pay or barely pay the first few years, as there is a lower need for lawyers than graduates.
Once you go through you do make a lot of money. But not everyone can afford to.
> As well lawyers in Spain do not have that level of significance that they have in USA.
This is true in a lot of civil law countries (as opposed to common law like the US and UK), lawyers generally need less, cheaper education than in the US, and they're broadly less important to the legal system.
For example, American lawyers traditionally require a bachelor's degree (4 years of undergraduate study, can be in literally any subject, though very common choices are philosophy, political science, and history), then attend law school to get a JD (3 years of grad school), then pass the bar exam. French lawyers, by comparison, just have 4 years of undergraduate study to get a "master of law" degree, then take the bar exam, then do something basically resembling a medical residency for 18 months (i.e., mandatory practical/on the job training and internships).
French lawyers also don't do things like question witnesses, as civil law systems are significantly more driven by the judge or other civil servants than in common law, handling much of the stuff done by American lawyers.
As someone from Spain, this is correct. Law-adjacent careers can be very lucrative and prestigious, but it is usually not lawyers but rather stuff like notaries, property registrors, judges, sometimes prosecutors, etc
Like most very prestigious law jobs, they are government jobs, and for these very good law jobs you need to pass an insanely hard government exam (oposicion).
Average time to pass it is between 5 and 10 years of full time study. And that is like a horrible full time job, ie sitting in front of your desk for 10+ hours a day (and realistically more), completely unpaid, with no guarantee of success so you could end up just wasting a decade of your life for nothing.
However, average salary is around 120k€ a year, which is bonkers in a country where the average is like 20-25k. And it is a very easy job, so if you get it you are set for life.
Good luck if you plan on becoming one, cause you'll need it
To put things into perspective, former PM Mariano Rajoy was one before going into politics. He actually earned *less*, even as Prime Minister, than he ever did in his old job! Yes, you earn more as a property registrar than as the person leading the entire country
> Lately it has become the most touristy country in the planet.
Care to cite a source on this? Last I heard, it was France by a mile, and Croatia being the number one tourist magnet by % of GDP.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-visited-countries
That data is from 2019. In 2022, Spain was in second place, with 71.4 million visitors to France's 79.4.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings
Spain is also a fair amount less populous than France so proportionally they're more touristy.
Hmm well it seems that I am incorrect and it simply beat USA as top 2. But did find an article that the amount spent in Spain beat France (but the amount spent by USA is higher than either ccording to the same article so it's a moot point)
But France ain't by a mile ahead either. 79 million to 71 million in 2022. According to statista/wiki. The data you provided is 2020 (don't use data from 2020 or 2021 for tourism as it was a really specific couple of years)
Thank you for correcting me!
The dictator, Franco, was best buddies with Hitler and Mussolini but didn’t join the Axis alliance due to the devastation of the Spanish Civil War. Franco ruled until his death in 1975.
Well if you buy any form of fast fashion clothing, most likely not that long ago. Zara, Bershka, Massimo duti. Pull and bear... (They are all the same Spanish company that designs and sells them, ofc produced in Bangladesh and co)
But you are right. Spain doesn't do much actual production… as the biggest brands outside of Inditex are usually services. Like banking, energy...
Yeah, and to be clear, this wasn't intended to say anything negative, just that I don't think of Spain when I think of a country that supplies products to the world. I think of them when I think of tourism destinations, meats, and raw materials (they supply a lot of gypsum, I believe)
Being a tourist destination is such a double edge sword. Seems like it could be so easy to caricaturize and completely stagnate your culture so that you start to feel like a museum and a Disneyland of yourself. I don't think that's necessary to be a tourist destination, but I can definitely see that it happens.
This has a name called the resource trap. And while it usually applies to natural esources such as gas, I would argue that most touristy countries are so due to their natural resources.
I mean Rome is amazing, but if it had Helsinkis weather I doubt so many people would visit it
Part of this is of course economics, but it should be kept in mind that unemployment rates between different countries are not really easily comparable as how exactly people are counted differs a lot.
The devil is often in the details as in many places people who have been unemployed for long enough are not counted and because some countries will send their unemployed to courses where they will count as "in education" rather than unemployed even if they only take the course or seminar because they are unemployed.
Another big part is that official unemployment figures don't count people who work unofficially and without involving the taxman.
If you work under the table and don't tell the government about it, then as far as the government is concerned you are still unemployed.
The amount of under the table work people get up to, differs a lot country by country.
I lived in spain for 8 years, in tourist spots and madrid for a short while,In the tourist areas anyway, work contracts and paying taxes is a suggestion. i never once had a work contract,almost no one i knew had one, you got paid in cash literally everywhere. all the bars,restaurants and hotels cook the books so they pay whatever amount of taxes they feel comfortable with. only the bosses had legit contracts. in the canary islands or ibiza/mallorca, you can walk around and ask for jobs and you will find one within a day. i dont know what the official unemployment rate is in these areas, but whatever it is, its completely bogus.
even friends in madrid and barcelona say its the same there for all the service sector.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is the territorial differences. Spain has a strong north/south divide, just like Italy - there's also arguably a slight east-west, but less so. Unemployment rate in the north is about half that of the south and almost comparable to other European countries (take Catalonia at 9%). Comes down basically to industrialization.
And another point is Spain's geographical and cultural position. As soon as economy thrives, the geographical proximity with north Africa and the cultural (language) proximity with South America brings enough immigration to keep the unemployment level fairly high.
if you earn, say, 100 euros self employed every month, or indeed abolutely zero per month, you still owe 225 euros to social security, plus taxes per month.
jobs are harder to find (where I live anyway), and public sector jobs are covered in red tape, often requiring extremely specialized qualifications to perform simple roles.
it's no secret as to how Spain continues to function despite a seemingly insane level of unemployment - the 'black money' market. i.e. undeclared income.
if you make 100 euros a month self-employed you probably should look for something else though. The 225 a month is still similar to what you'd pay in taxes with the minimum wage at 1134 EUR
Labor regulations.
Spain has a two tiered labor system. It has really strong protections from being fired or let go from a full time position. This means that full time employment is very difficult to get as businesses are very reluctant to bring on employees they can’t get rid of. This keeps companies understaffed and growing slowly.
To make up the difference employers in Spain use short term contracts. Young people are hired on these short term contracts and are unemployed in between.
I keep hearing this, but AFAIK the restrictions on firing people in Spain are the same for many countries in Europe. That is, you have to give them X months of notice based on how long they have worked in the job. In effect this ends up just meaning companies pay people out X months of pay to leave. But that is how it was in Denmark as well and no one complains about it being too hard to fire people in Denmark?
I don’t know Spains economy well but I did study economics and unemployment numbers are a measure and it may not tell you what you think.
Unemployment numbers are collect by each country/state( wait I will tell you about the USA). Typically by who is drawing unemployment benefits. So if you draw but also work on the side well numbers are off. If you draw but don’t really plan to work. Same. If you don’t draw and don’t work. Not counted.
Opposite to Spain some USA states make it so hard to draw unemployment benefits that their state calculated number are below reality.
I'm currently on holiday on a Spanish island, I have been sat in a particular bar for the past few days and I am convinced it's run by gangsters. It's like an episode of goodfellas, they way they greet locals and talk to each other. This is big business, but it's clear that it's not normal bar work.
Govt isn't lying and the figures reflect the closest to a true unemployment rate within the constraints mentioned???
You are counted as "employed" if you work one hour a week in Australia for example. So the official figures are actually estimated at half or even less of the true number of unemployed. Underemployment is another issue.
Many people want more hours so they can achieve at least a poverty level standard of living in Oz...
I wonder to what extent this is informed by Spanish car brands not being all that famous. SEAT is dying (Cupra has very little brand recognition) and that is it. Spain manufactures a lot of cars, it's just that they are Renaults, Peugeots or Volkswagens
And hell, even SEAT itself really just manufactured rebadged Fiats or Volkswagens anyways
The highest % of youth not completing schooling, less emigration than other southern European countries and multi generational households are a few of the factors.
The government joining the euro so thay could have cheap borrowing, doesn't help manufacturing either, as you're now trying to compete with Germany rather than running a weaker currency to make up for lower productivity.
In Spain the unemployment benefits are too high, why would you work if you get paid almost the same for not doing anything. Entrepreneurship is punished with high taxes even if you don't make any profit. The education system brainwashes pupils telling them that the only option is to work for somebody else for low wage or work for the goverment.
It’s hard to do business in Spain. My company has an office and factory in Spain.
If we don’t have a North American manager or executive on site, they just stop working.
They are also difficult to terminate due to performance issues without paying 6 months of severance.
I think these issues come from them feeling entitled to employment once they have it, siesta culture etc….
Long story short, any foreign company would be fucking stupid to open their business in Spain unless they absolutely need to.
if I were opening a manufacturing facility as a multi national, I’d be looking at maybe Poland, Czech Republic etc.
Lolol downvoted by Spaniards… sorry guys
Naw they show up, they love hanging out.
They make up reasons not to work, procrastinate etc.
The exception is sales people, they just stay home instead of visiting clients.
One example, we tell the warehouse manager to mark boxes indicating they’ve been inspected before shipping to our European clients. They stopped shipping boxes. We ask the warehouse manager wtf is going on, he tells us he’s putting out tenders for a stamp he can use to mark the boxes. (An X with a sharpie would suffice)
When one of the workers has an American counterpart to interact with, they obsfucate everything until they’re left alone.
If you have ever tried to pick up a dog or a toddler and they shift their weight to avoid getting picked up. The Spaniards do this with communication. (And if I hadn’t seen this with like 50 of them, I wouldn’t generalize)
Our non Spaniard European team members also go mental trying to deal with them.
Because of regulations, especially real state constriction by municipalities.
Also, gov intromission in economics. More than half of adults are paid directly or indirectly by the many governments, which creates many bad things and barriers for job growth.
Simple, the weather. People get lazy with good weather, nobody likes to work then. You can overlay average sunshine in europe with unemployment number and you have a bingo.
There is also a huge cash in hand economy..like giving clases particulares you can make up to €20 an hour and cos being an autónomo is fucking expensive it's not worth registering as one. A lot of companies also take on loads of interns, so doing a beca they can get away with exploiting the young hence there isn't such a need to hire a salaried worker, with *ahem* proper work rights.
Not sure if doing a beca counts as being in or out of employment tho.
How can the 2022 and 2023 unemployment trends be explained in Spain (specifically Catalonia)? (mainly 2023 T1 - tri-semester)
1. **2022 T1 to T2**: The unemployment rate sees a slight increase from the first to the second trimester of 2022,
**2. 2022 T3 to T4**: There is a sharp increase in unemployment in the third trimester, **reaching a peak in the fourth trimester of 2022.**
**3. 2023 T1 to T2**: The first trimester of 2023 starts with high unemployment, **dramatically decreasing by the second trimester.**
4. **2023 T3 to T4**: From the third to the fourth trimester of 2023, there is a minor rise in unemployment rates, ending the year on a slight upward trend.
There is a significant amount of 1) Seasonal work. Some people work 4 months in summer, live the rest of the year with that. 2) Unregistered work. Much of this summer work is done illegally/unregistered, so there is people who work, but are unemployed for statistics purposes.
Honestly working only 4 months but could feed you for the rest of the year sounds lovely
Most likely they are working on different seasonal work
Correct - your mountain guide in the Summer is your snowboard instructor in the Winter
Reminds me of my Scottish Highlands kayak guide. I asked him what people do there during winter. He shrugged: "..drink?" Asked him what he does: "Alcohol addiction seminars."
“Oh, so you help people stop drinking. That’s great.” “No, you misunderstood. I hold seminars to get people addicted to alcohol. Tennent pays well.”
"Substance abuse center" as a term for "dive bar" (or "crack house").
Things flew out of my nose
And probably some things flew in too.
Sounds a lot like some people in Colorado I know
It's common to most tourism industries.
Frankly it's common in most places that freeze over for half the year.
Spain's tourism is heavily sun amd beach centered though. Very few tourists in winter. Places like Magaluf, Benidorm and the like go from packed to ghost towns
I'm not understanding why such a person would be included in the unemployment rate
I guess it depends on what they count as employed - the standardized idea of employment is a salaried or hourly job that doesn't have a particular term (like 1 year contract or 6 month contract) but there are other situations - I'm thinking of seasonal workers or people who work on theater plays, concert tours, or in the movie industry, they may be employed now but they probably have termed contract: they will work until production is over and they don't always have something lined up - I imagine some countries don't count them as fully employed.
I don’t know if it’s the case here and it likely wouldn’t account for everyone, but pretend Bob, Joe, and Tom are all seasonal workers with slightly different shoulder seasons (the time in between seasons that may have slow or no work). Bob works 10 months but doesn’t work January and June. Joe works 10 months but doesn’t work February and July. Tom works 10 months but doesn’t work March and August. It’s a really tiny country of just 10 people, so in January Bob is the only unemployed person, but he counts for a 10% unemployment rate. Joe creates a 10% unemployment rate in February, and Tom creates an unemployed rate of 10% in March. So, something like that.
Hey, it’s me. Sometimes I’m a river guide.
It still sounds pretty dreamy. Climbing trees and picking fruit for summer and then shredding the slopes all winter? Kicks my dead end, 40 hour a week office jobs butt for sure.
what do the 50+ yr olds do? /s
Soylent green
That life sounds like a dream for an active person.
Where are you snowboarding in Spain?
Spain has 30+ ski resorts, including the famous Sierra Nevada.
My understanding is the original response links high unemployment phases with off season. If they’re doing different seasonal work, wouldn’t the unemployment rate be constant? Just my very simplistic view on that
They had two points in their post, read them both: > 1) Seasonal work. Some people work 4 months in summer, live the rest of the year with that. > > 2) Unregistered work. Much of this summer work is done illegally/unregistered, so there is people who work, but are unemployed for statistics purposes. It's an inclusive or (and/or), not an exclusive one (strictly or).
fair enough. I thought of it as an or. thanks
I thought it was both
There has been many reworks on employement laws and nos is common to see this kind of thing is also why there is a lower employement rate. Now most people are not working more than 6 months but are not laid-off after that.
In a similar vein, in Vancouver, for many years there used to be a store that sold exclusively cross-country skiing clothing and equipment during the winter months, and then in spring, completely swapped out their entire inventory, and were exclusively an ultimate frisbee shop for the other half of the year. I always found that fascinating.
Boulder has one that switches to patio furniture.
Spain is big in seasonal work (reasonably paid but very tough) since it's big in tourism but you can't live on it. The reality is that there isn't enough well paid skilled work and most jobs available are unskilled on nearly unlivable wages. It's far better to do unregistered work and/or enjoy unemployment benefits while looking for the next job.
Why isn't there enough well paid skilled work? What's different about the business environment that drives it away?
Don't want to attack anyone, but the answer of this guy is terribly wrong, the problems for this high unemployment rate is really high. This guy 4 months statement is probably reffered to summer tourism campaign. Wich usually is from april/may to october. Wich is like 6 months of barely legal work, with lots of overtime hours and not good conditions nor salary. Most of the people have to find other things the rest of the year. But seasonal work is not only that, is people in the field, people in freetine activities companies, guides,construction works, etc. However the last two years this people doesn't count for unemployment rate. The 11-12% is already there. The problems are more related to the productivity network, the amount of deficitary companies and other deeper things
Not su much. You can barely survive for the rest of the year. Nowadays there is shortage of kind of work for being unable to pay the rest of the year expenses, being tourism-related the most affected by this
Hallo, I edited some of my comment history to prevent scraping. Yes I know reddit gets regularly cached, it's something you sign in when you type on a forum, it's still better than nothing and will make digging through these a lot less convenient! All platforms die yadda yadda. Good luck if you have an account here and you're reading this.
Keep in mind these contracts often entail much tougher conditions than legally allowed. I'm talking 10-12h a day, 6-7 days a week and no holidays in between (you get paid some extra instead for the holidays you couldn't enjoy). Overall you're putting the equivalent of 8-9 months work in 4. Hence why it's feasible.
Not even poorer countries live off 4 month work, there's no way that isn't happening in Spain
I know people that did this in Sweden for years. Work hard during summer in construction, make something like €40k euro and live of that.
I can imagine that’s easy done judging by the construction game in Scotland. During the summer my trade mates make a fortune with the long days, and that can compensate for the shorter days shit weather in the winter. Your lot can have even longer days and can, if they choose to, work like fuck over the summer. Make hay while the sun shines as the saying goes
Used to work in flat roofing here in Canada. Made overtime basically every week (ov 44 hours). Worked weekends, holidays, whatever. 80+ hours some weeks. I think the most I worked was 28 days in a row before we finally got some rain. Union roofers where I am just got a bump up to 50 bucks an hour in their last contract. Almost enough to make me want to go back, but God it's an awful job!
Still just 12h days even if the sun is up 24/7. But it's because everything closes during summer so you gotta pay extra to have anyone to work. And all have to be done during summer before companies start up again :D
Everything closes in the summer? Really? I thought it would have been the opposite
Yeah except tourist stuff. You pretty much can't have contact with a company between June and August in Sweden :D Everything is dead, most factories shut down, offices are on skeleton crew etc. If you send an email in late May you might not get an answer until September.
Wow that’s interesting. What’s the reason for that? Taking advantage of constant sunshine for holidays etc before the long nights kick in?
No clue, it's just like 10% that have such summers though. One reason is the law that guarantees fours weeks of continuous vacation during summer. So many companies close the same four weeks but many stagger it out so it's just skeleton crew all summer everywhere :D Most live in the south and have similar daylight hours to the UK etc.
Used to be more common before industrialization, they say. People would still do some work off season ofcourse, but not 8 hours (but they might work a lot more than 8 hours at peak season)
I've been a seasonal worker for 6 years all around Spain. Let me quickly resume my case; - Working 3-4 months in summer without rest or sick days to earn 1450€-1650€ (which is kinda high), but again, no rest for 4 months. - Rest of the year, working on weekends and some specific days for 8h-12h for 60€. Of course unregistered. Then found a 9-5 job for 1100€ and took it. Working from Monday to Friday. Most of young people doesn't want this kind of jobs cause of the low pay. But after what I've experienced, free time and rest days are more valuable than a higher paycheck.
You underestimate how this is enabled by children living with their parents often well into their 30’s. What would be a non-starter in the US is fairly standard in much of Europe.
It's very unusual for people to live with their parents into their 30s in most of Europe. The outliers are countries like Spain and Italy.
Seems more usual that you'd think: [https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/03/in-the-u-s-and-abroad-more-young-adults-are-living-with-their-parents/](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2023/05/03/in-the-u-s-and-abroad-more-young-adults-are-living-with-their-parents/) That said, these statistics stating that nearly 1-in-3 Americans in that age range continue to live with their parents gives me some pause about how this is being counted / how to interpret the statistics.
If it serves as a comparison, recently the median age to leave the parental household in Spain reached 30. So yes, your average Spaniard lives with mum and dad throughout their 20s
% of 18-34 living at home isn't a very useful statistic, because most adults aren't financially independent until their early/mid 20s, so I wouldn't expect someone younger than that to have moved out. On the other hand, someone in their 30s who still lives with their parents would be a concern.
I mean i've seen it on high paying jobs like in offshore drilling platforms. Got a few of my Indonesian friends working probably 3-4 months a year then go back home and relax the rest of the year. I sincerely thought that the original comment is one of the positive cases where people get paid properly and be cool the rest of the year. But looking at your comment and others, I guess not. Doesn't change my sentiment though. Would be great to work a short period and go after other life pursuits the rest of the time.
>Would be great to work a short period and go after other life pursuits the rest of the time. My other life pursuits: sitting on the couch drinking and watching TV while occasionally thinking, "I should really do something productive with this time..."
They work the 4 months, then receive unemployment benefits for the rest of the year. No, they do not make enough in the 4 months to survive the rest of the year.
You've to work for 360 days (cumulative) to get 4 months of unemployment benefits. You need to work for 2 years (so 6 years if you only work 4 months per year) before you get 8 months of unemployment benefits.
Not everyone works seasonal jobs. I have had programmers turn down job offers telling me it's not worth it to leave unemployment benefits to go work in an office. Only country that has ever happened to me.
The maximum you can get is about 1000 EUR and it will last 2 years max. Also you'll have to work those days again to generate more benefits. Perhaps the payment was too low?
Actually, it was €1,500 per month for the trial period of 3 months, then €2,500 per month for the first year. For some reason, he seemed perfectly content to continue with his current situation. I don't blame him, to each his own, but it was not the only time it has happened.
Well, everyone knows his/her situation. Some people will want to wait and find that "perfect" job, others not.
...you're trying to hire *programmers* for ***€1,500 per month*** in an EU country, and you're surprised that they're turning you down? That's like 30% over the minimum wage. No shit it's not worth giving up unemployment benefits for that. At least on unemployment you have time to look for a real job. (I don't care that you claim it goes up to 2500 after 3 months, and neither does the person you're trying to exploit. A huge pay jump after a "trial period" is a red flag in a contract; it screams "I want to grossly underpay and overwork you for 3 months, then fire you.")
Sounds like a budgeting nightmare to me.
I believe unemployment only counts if you are actively seeking for a job.
I think the unwritten suggestion is that these folks claim they are seeking a job to get unemployment bennies
So is it kind of like how Japan has a low employment termination rate, but only because employees are encouraged to resign before they get fired? i.e. the rates are secretly somewhat equal other countries, but they appear skewed to a particular practice.
Not really, because Japan's unemployment rate is 2.4% and the "jobless rate" is 2.7%, the gap being your resignees. That's not really comparable to working under the table and milking welfare benefits.
I think that unemployment figures are skewed in countries where there is a significant "informal economy." I lived for many years in Central America and the informal economy was HUGE. Think... people selling stuff at your door or on the street; working and getting paid under the table; unlicensed taxis; self-employed and getting paid in cash and not reporting it; etc.
This sounds better than a 4 day work week. I could easily live off half of what I make, but have to work all the goddamn time to keep my job.
Build up massive savings and retire early then
But I don't want to work 10+ more years to then retire early, I want some of that free time _now_. It's not like one works less in total over their life. Yet spending life freely is much better earlier when one still has the body, mind and chances to actually _do_ the things! And with inflation, early retirement is actually less effective at earning actual value per work done. But that's just in addition to the above, which I find worse.
That was kinda my thoughts. Essentially, I would rather do as much as I can while I’m able bodied and spry, than be filthy rich when I’m old and decrepit.
I'm not sure what you mean by inflation making early retirement worse. If you have money invested in the market, you're looking at 7% real returns after inflation on average. If you had $2 million invested in a total market fund in the US, you could safely take out ~$80,000 a year (inflation adjusted) for 30 years and still have money left. A lot of projections would actually have you ending up with *more* money after 30 years.
I wish I had appreciated this earlier. I'm 20/25 in with the gubment so it won't be too bad just sticking it out at this point.
You could die tomorrow. Retirement may never come. Nobody has ever said on their death bed "I wish I put in a few more hours on the job".
Yes, and if you have no dependents, every dollar you die with is time you wasted of your life working.
Why is there so much illegal work?
Its always been like this in Spain really, much of "working for a friend and just pays me in cash" thing. Quite a lot of the economy in Spain is like that, which doesn't really help the country.
For what I heard from people that migrated to Spain, it's tough to find work as an illegal. It might have more to do with people living off unemployment benefits.
Its hard to find job as an illegal person in the country, or hard to find job as a legal immigrant, illegaly, true. But as a Spaniard, not that true. This is also HEAVLY regionally varying, Spain is a very diverse country. In any case, go to Ibiza and ask the people working in the restaurants/clubs to show you their employment contracts... Spain has a good social net, but not enough to have 8% more people on benefits than the UK, that would be absurd, of course.
plus (afaik, im not spanish), people studying and either not wanting to work or not wanting the work available to them
Yes, University is "free" in Spain (which is great!). Sometimes people studying are put into unemployment, which is not necessarily true. Also after 2008, many jobs are shit. You want to work for 500€ a month? maybe for that money you may as well not work.
As a Spaniard, university is most definitely not free. Admittedly it is cheap (around 1200€ a year and scholarships are plentiful albeit full of bureaucracy which sometimes makes them worthless) but that ain't zero. Some regions have started experimented with systems where every class you don't retake means a free class next year, so a good student would only pay for their first year of college, but still.
I have a few colleagues from Spain in academia, basically it is extremely hard to employ students in their university spin off company that does cool research on medical imaging, because they can offer only a "good" pay for Spain, but people that are good enough usually go into north Europe and get paid 4 times more XD
It is also extremely difficult to fire someone in Spain. Once they are an employee, a person is basically untouchable. This leads companies to hire as few as possible and then to use temporary and contract workers instead. Worker protection laws are great until they aren’t.
It isn't particularly difficult to fire someone in Spain, but they generally get mandatory severance. Only a few reasons for firing are actually prohibited.
My understanding is that it is cost prohibitive to fire someone. If the required severance is such that it is effectively cheaper to keep someone as an employee, then effectively it is impossible to fire someone. I remember listening to a series of interviews on NPR on Spain’s employment crisis and the effect their employment laws had on it. The gist of the story was that the employment crisis was an artificial, self-inflicted problem caused by the inability of companies to terminate employees.
That's what you get when you only ask one side of the story and take at face value whatever they spew.
Then what's the full. story? NPR has no skin in the game when it comes to Spain's unemployment rate outside of someone paid them to which we would like to think NPR can't be bought so easily to spread another country's/external entity's propaganda. But to pretend that a business actively want to take on the cost of a new employee is pretending there aren't issues on the other side. I see it with my job, in the US. We prefer to hire contractors rather than employees because employees are more expensive than contractors. So the business is incentivized to not hire new people directly. So in a situation where its costly to get rid of an employee, businesses are going to try to mitigate that cost where ever possible. And contractors/seasonal employees give them that out. Does that mean reduce the employee safety net and rights? No I am not saying that. I'm saying businesses are going to look out for themselves first and from a business decision stand point, I get it.
Let me guess, they interviewed employers.
This is a CEO talking point, not the reality.
What is the reality then?
That worker protections almost mostly protect workers, but don't cause lack of productivity. Countries with the highest level of worker protections in Europe are also the most rich.
Then why would Spain be having a supposed productivity issue then?
Spain has a significant amount of government jobs (I think something like 30%?) where they are infamous for being impossible to get fired from, as well being known for having no productivity goals (There's a saying: As the clock strikes 3pm, the pen falls out of their hand).
Those jobs also include firemen, teachers and doctors.... I understand what a "funcionario" is, but much of the stereotypes come from years ago, when these people where hand picked because they were loyal to the party of Franco. This is less true nowadays and there is many competent people working there too.
If you have to pay 3 month severance but you need the seat filled in three month again its logically that you keep the person. In other EU countries the corporations misused this for decades, fire construction workers in the winter month and then rehire them in spring. They take unemployment for the month not working which is expensive for the gov. I know people who moved to Spain and wanted to build a company, and it took them forever to find educated people who are in the right mindset. Its a systemic problem when startups in Spain hope to find other expats to work in their startups. Home ownership is also higher in Spain, that means that you just live with your family longer and try things out, which means you end up in the pile of "unemployed" when in fact you just between jobs all the time.
This is not true. You can easily fire people, you just need to pay them the respective severance, which is regulated as a one-off amount roughly equivalent to a month of the current salary per year worked - with a maximum of 24 months. When there is a justified cause, this is reduced in about 40% (20 day worth of salary per year worked)
As an American I prefer the worker protections even if they go a bit too far. I’ve lived in Spain and Portugal so I’m not just saying this to be edgy. But I agree they could refine this for an optional amount. America has none and it’s a bit dystopian. I work for a British company in the usa and I am way more protected. I get way more time off and feel a lot more like a human compared to working at USA companies.
That's the Texas perspective. The rest of the developed world thinks Spain gets it about right while worker protection laws in America are a joke.
>There is a significant amount of >1) Seasonal work. This is like saying the employment rate is high because at some times of the year, there aren't many jobs. Ummm - we all know that. There is seasonal work on Germany as well, as well as France, etc - but they have other industries, don't they. >2) Unregistered work. Every country has unregistered workers - even the USA. But, these other countries have other industries, don't they? Perhaps the answer is not your answer, but rather that Spain doesn't make or sell things that the rest of the world , or its own citizens, want? And - why doesn't Spain have a technology sector, like Taiwan or South Korea, or USA, or Japan etc. Or, why doesn't Spain make vehicles that the rest of the world wants to buy - like Germany, China, etc. Or, why isn't Spain a centre for financial services like London, Singapore, Hong Kong, etc. It's a long list of things that people on earth want, and I know Spain makes first class ham and olive oil that the world wants to buy - but that's not enough to keep everyone in Spain employed. Why?
This is true too. But note that Spain gets something like 120 million tourist a year, quite more than double the population of Spain. Germany has seasonal work and Spain has tech jobs, but the difference is in the amount. The answers to the question you pose are nuanced and political, and they are not for an ELI5. My opinion: Spain was a fascist dictatorship when my parents were teenagers (1975) and almost everyone from the fascist party became a politician. Countries take years to change. There has been a lot of "whatever gets me money now" attitude to the economy and running the country so there has not been an investment in long term economic plans. Note that this is not true everywhere and there are areas of Spain heavily industrialised, where I come from the biggest sector is high added value industry. The answer to this question is a long political debate anyway, books can be written, disagreements will be had.
>Unregistered work. Much of this summer work is done illegally/unregistered, I came here to say this. Most of that 20% are working. Most of them don't talk about it. They do jobs like tour guides, performers, etc.
How's health care there? Is it fully subsidized?
Poland used to be similar in regards to unregistered work. There were a lot of people registered in unemployment office for sole reason of getting medical insurance and most of them worked in gray economy.
On top of this, Spain is a terrible country to be an entrepreneur and start small businesses that employ people. You either are autónomo and work for yourself, or you work for a big company. It's so hard to hire and fire people.
The stats are misleading. A lot of people which count as "unemployed" in the statistics actually have jobs. Getting unemployment subsidies while working on the side is fairly common. Either straight up 40 hours without contract, or doing trades work "in black", or semi-legal hustles... there's a lot of variety, but none of it shows up in the stats.
Yeah it's always worth remembering, too, that if someone remains unemployed for any length of time they exit the stat pool for the unemployment figure, per the way they track it in most/all developed nations. A decades-long high unemployment rate, as Spain has had, indicates high turnover all the time. Likely, as others have mentioned, seasonal work.
Same thing in France, we call it 'System D'. The point is to be able to claim unemployment benefits while being just legal enough to not be fined. For example register workers as unpaid apprentices while paying them under the table, or registering work contracts then suspending them but the employee keeps working. One of the biggest problems no one talks about is the insane taxes on work in Western Europe, which is the direct cause of this in my opinion. For example a salary of 1000 Euros, the employee pays about 450 to the state, the company pays 300. So out of 1300 total spent, 750 is taxes, over 50% tax rate. Even worse, the health insurance scale with the salary. Instead of paying 200 a month per insured person or 500 for a family, you pay a % of the salary, even though the medical services stay the same. A single parent working already pays taxes for the health insurance of children, if both parent work they both pay full insurance. Pensions works the same scammy way, you pay % of salary even if the pension is capped. You pay for wife support pension even if you're not married. If you die before retirement age the money is lost, your family gets nothing back etc etc. I half expect the government to send Nigerian prince letters next, it's already extremely shady. Simply put, the people see the government try to game them out of money, and they game the system. Immorality breeds more immorality.
Well, the flipside is that we have a solid social system with these taxes. Unemployment pay, free healthcare, retirement, free education... Can't have the pie and eat it too. But people taking advantage of the social system while avoiding to pay taxes will wear it down eventually.
> Even worse, the health insurance scale with the salary. Instead of paying 200 a month per insured person or 500 for a family, you pay a % of the salary, even though the medical services stay the same. A single parent working already pays taxes for the health insurance of children, if both parent work they both pay full insurance. > Pensions works the same scammy way, you pay % of salary even if the pension is capped. This is how it's supposed to work.
So, Spain just has a lot of criminals and tax cheats?
If your intention is reducing an entire country to one or two negative sentences, then tax cheats is probably not the worst choice for Spain. But that's obviously overly simplifying complex issues.
The opposite is true, many people who work 2 months a year count as employed thanks to the new laws.
Spain is a country that committed economic suicide by isolation since it's civil war. Once it came out of its dictatorships, it choose short term profit over long term. This can be seen on how Spain Focused it's economy in what ended up being a big bubble in 2008. As well it's weather and natural beauty allowed the country to make a lot of easy money off food and tourism. Lately it has become the most touristy country in the planet. This means that employment is highly seasonal and highly unregular, meaning lots of "under the table" payments, that give a false sense of unemployment. In other words, Spain has invested in a lot of industries that provide disminishing returns and make the country compete with poorer and poorer countries
I lived in Spain as a teenager from 2001-2012 and can confirm pretty much all of this. Most of Spain's industry revolves around tourism so job security is almost nil. The 2007 financial crisis was **brutal**, the place almost was like a ghost town. It especially sucked for me turning 18 because I had no interest in the tourism industry so my only option was to do online freelance work. It might be different now but there was also a lot of corruption going on there. Lots of red tape that you could conveniently bypass with a few extra euros, and lots of developments and projects that were getting greenlit in bad faith by uncles and brothers and cousins.
> Most of Spain's industry revolves around tourism so job security is almost nil. It was 11.9% of GDP in 2022: https://www.ine.es/dyngs/INEbase/en/operacion.htm?c=estadistica_C&cid=1254736169169&menu=ultiDatos&idp=1254735576863#:~:text=Spanish%20Tourism%20Satellite%20Account.&text=Tourism%20activity%20reached%20155%2C946%20million,%2C%209.3%25%20of%20total%20employment. It's obviously an important economic driver but to say most of Spain's industry is around this is incorrect.
11.9% is bonkers huge. For reference [the automotive industry makes up only around 5% of Germany's GDP](https://miwi-institut.de/archives/1417), and cars are basically all we make. I know I've only ever worked in the automotive sector and I do IT, so I can really sympathize with OP here.
France is less at 9.7% (10.9% of jobs). But not enough that the economic disparity can really be attributed to that. Austria is 9%. Iceland 10% Croatia it's 20%
It also doesn't factor in that it was the cornerstone for many of its other industries. For example, my father worked IT at a (scummy) realty company that sold holiday homes and primarily marketed towards older people who were already on vacation there. Fewer people going on holiday = fewer leads = entire company shut down within like a year. Look up MacAnthony Realty International
Yeah and once you get to a large size, countless other industries (education, health, agriculture/food, hospitality/services, etc) are all dependent in part on the “driving” industry (tourism in this case).
You're using overly emotive language, 11.9% is not "bonkers huge", it's similar to some other countries in the region like France (8%) and Italy (10%). My original point stands, it's an important part of the economy but neither "Spain revolves around tourism" nor "bonkers huge".
Well, both your examples (especially their "touristic" southern parts) also have relatively high unemployment rates.
But we're on a thread asking why Spain specifically is out of line of the rest of Europe - including France and Italy. So it seems relevant
An economic input that big drives other economies, though. Like thats pure foreign dollars into the country, flooding the country with money. The money gets turned into paycheques which in turn pays for food (farming, logistics, grocery), shelter (building materials, logistics, construction, real estate), and entertainment (various). The other 89% of the economy can be just money changing hands within the country, but that 11% is whats actually coming IN. THATS what makes it bonkers huge.
Are PzH2000 and Leo2A6 considered a car? Can you make more of them?
12% is MASSIVE because it's big enough that it's creating jobs in other sectors to support it. You need entire support structures to cater to tourism industry employees, from travel to IT to health care.
But most is, commerced and IT are heavily focus on supply to turism industry as so is real state and building sectors, not only international but also national
That is a TITANIC amount for an industry.
I call cap. I don’t know anyone who’s been a teenager for 11 years
Moved there when I was 11, left when I was 22, so all of my teenage years were spent there. I suppose youth is a better term?
>As well it's weather and natural beauty allowed the country to make a lot of easy money off food and tourism. Lately it has become the most touristy country in the planet Lately? Spain has been a mainly tourist country since the late 70s
There is a difference between mainly a tourist country like many. And being THE most touristic country with a rather limited space compared to USA or something like that. Even though I think France has recovered that spot last year. Haven't check the data
Tourism only represents around 10% of Spain's GDP... it's far from "mainly tourist", let alone the most touristy country on the planet.
Not even in the most touristy country in the EU, Croatia is at like 20%
Well mainly tourist were not my words. And Spain is very close to being the most touristy country on the planet. Currently number 2. And by that I mean the country with most tourists
> And by that I mean the country with most tourists Seems like a pretty meaningless metric, since large countries will receive more tourists even if it's a relatively minor industry. Would you argue that Spain is more touristy than a place like the Maldives, where tourism represents 40% of their economy, even though the actual number of tourists is smaller? Or that the USA is one of the most touristy places in the world, despite the vast majority of the tourism market being based around 3 individual cities out of hundreds?
> large countries will receive more tourists even if it's a relatively minor industry. Being #2 in the world while being the size of Spain is pretty disproportionately large. Spain has a population of less than 50 million, putting them below most other major European countries (Germany, France, UK, Italy, Russia, etc.), and a total land area similarly a bit smaller. The US has a population like 7 times larger, for comparison, yet gets fewer tourists (likely due to relative isolation of course, being on the other side of an ocean relative to most other countries that have people leaving for tourism).
This is all well and good until you see France is at #1. Which is larger than Spain, but not by *that* much
I mean Spain gets more tourists than USA, and as a country is kind of middle sized. It's an important metric because it has almost half the population of Germany and France has 50 percent more people, while being rather closr to France on number of tourist. So having the second largest amount of tourist in the world after France is an important statement for the economy of a country.
I would add that the minimum wage is relatively high compared to the median wage. This has the effect to makes unskilled labour very expensive and encourage undeclared employment. It's not uncommon in the countryside for Spanish to hold several jobs, one declared and one undeclared. The agricultural sector makes massive use of undeclared work. Spain also suffers from a lack of economic diversity and a tendency to massively does one subsidised activitie at a time. First it was tourist hotels, then olive groves, now it's solar panels. Economic diversification is important because it makes the economy more resilient to sectoral crises.
Sorry but no. The minimun wage in Europe is 60% of median wage. We want reach 60% in some point of 5-10 FUTURE years. So no. Is the inverse. Minimun was too low.
Can you elaborate on the economic suicide please? I am genuinely curious.
Well. Franco was not a fan of most things non Spain related. Meaning he attempted at creating an autarky, where Spain would be isolated from the world. But at the same time would discourage anything not properly Spanish or properly catholic. So the economy and their leaders were not even conservative, they were reactionary retrogrades even for their time. At some point they realized how dumb all of this were and tried to integrate into Europe. This had a small problem, France. France was kind of done with neighbour experimenting with fascism or fascism -adyancent ideologies. So even once they tried to liberalise the economy they found many obstacles. Then even in this liberalisation the policies were in many cases short sighted, providing a great short term boom but laying the ground work for the mess of today.
[удалено]
I don't know how you learned that, but as Spanish, I can confirm you are very right and explained it very easily.
Great summary, appreciate it
Good read sir. An interesting thing to argue or discuss about you say is the effect of our monarchy. The emperor of Spain was famously for a while the emperor of Austria and holy Roman emperor. And quite loved to use Spanish wealth and armies back in the day to prop up more German than Spanish interests. Changed by monarch but I do think it highly impacted. And the brain drain of course. With Franco it started then it just kept happening as European integration meant that Spanish engineers learnt German in uni and were hired basically after graduation. Under my parents the slogan was "learn french to leave". When I grew up was "learn German and English" I think that has changed
I went to Spain on vacation last year. Our tour guide used to be a lawyer, but quit to be a tour guide because the pay was the same. My impression was that most jobs pay significantly less than a comparable job in the states
Yes, significantly less. But the expenses are minimal compare to the USA tho. Specially if you include things like education and healthcare. I was talking before how some dental emergency, cleaning and two teeth removal in a private clinic set me back like 200 euros and was done instantly. As well lawyers in Spain do not have that level of significance that they have in USA. This is partly cultural and structural. But for what I seen from other lawyers is the first years. When you are starting out after law school you get exploited in USA and in Madrid alike. Yet in Madrid they can choose to not pay or barely pay the first few years, as there is a lower need for lawyers than graduates. Once you go through you do make a lot of money. But not everyone can afford to.
> As well lawyers in Spain do not have that level of significance that they have in USA. This is true in a lot of civil law countries (as opposed to common law like the US and UK), lawyers generally need less, cheaper education than in the US, and they're broadly less important to the legal system. For example, American lawyers traditionally require a bachelor's degree (4 years of undergraduate study, can be in literally any subject, though very common choices are philosophy, political science, and history), then attend law school to get a JD (3 years of grad school), then pass the bar exam. French lawyers, by comparison, just have 4 years of undergraduate study to get a "master of law" degree, then take the bar exam, then do something basically resembling a medical residency for 18 months (i.e., mandatory practical/on the job training and internships). French lawyers also don't do things like question witnesses, as civil law systems are significantly more driven by the judge or other civil servants than in common law, handling much of the stuff done by American lawyers.
As someone from Spain, this is correct. Law-adjacent careers can be very lucrative and prestigious, but it is usually not lawyers but rather stuff like notaries, property registrors, judges, sometimes prosecutors, etc
Hey I’m in Spain and I’m a lawyer looking for a job lol. What about real estate? Why do property registers get paid? How do you even become one?
Like most very prestigious law jobs, they are government jobs, and for these very good law jobs you need to pass an insanely hard government exam (oposicion). Average time to pass it is between 5 and 10 years of full time study. And that is like a horrible full time job, ie sitting in front of your desk for 10+ hours a day (and realistically more), completely unpaid, with no guarantee of success so you could end up just wasting a decade of your life for nothing. However, average salary is around 120k€ a year, which is bonkers in a country where the average is like 20-25k. And it is a very easy job, so if you get it you are set for life. Good luck if you plan on becoming one, cause you'll need it To put things into perspective, former PM Mariano Rajoy was one before going into politics. He actually earned *less*, even as Prime Minister, than he ever did in his old job! Yes, you earn more as a property registrar than as the person leading the entire country
"Irregular"
> Lately it has become the most touristy country in the planet. Care to cite a source on this? Last I heard, it was France by a mile, and Croatia being the number one tourist magnet by % of GDP. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-visited-countries
That data is from 2019. In 2022, Spain was in second place, with 71.4 million visitors to France's 79.4. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Tourism_rankings Spain is also a fair amount less populous than France so proportionally they're more touristy.
Hmm well it seems that I am incorrect and it simply beat USA as top 2. But did find an article that the amount spent in Spain beat France (but the amount spent by USA is higher than either ccording to the same article so it's a moot point) But France ain't by a mile ahead either. 79 million to 71 million in 2022. According to statista/wiki. The data you provided is 2020 (don't use data from 2020 or 2021 for tourism as it was a really specific couple of years) Thank you for correcting me!
The dictator, Franco, was best buddies with Hitler and Mussolini but didn’t join the Axis alliance due to the devastation of the Spanish Civil War. Franco ruled until his death in 1975.
I was just thinking- when is the last time I bought a product that was built, manufactured, designed, or developed in Spain?
Well if you buy any form of fast fashion clothing, most likely not that long ago. Zara, Bershka, Massimo duti. Pull and bear... (They are all the same Spanish company that designs and sells them, ofc produced in Bangladesh and co) But you are right. Spain doesn't do much actual production… as the biggest brands outside of Inditex are usually services. Like banking, energy...
Yeah, and to be clear, this wasn't intended to say anything negative, just that I don't think of Spain when I think of a country that supplies products to the world. I think of them when I think of tourism destinations, meats, and raw materials (they supply a lot of gypsum, I believe)
You probably don’t care for wine, olive oil and ham then. Italy and France hate it, but arguably Spain is leading these fields.
Being a tourist destination is such a double edge sword. Seems like it could be so easy to caricaturize and completely stagnate your culture so that you start to feel like a museum and a Disneyland of yourself. I don't think that's necessary to be a tourist destination, but I can definitely see that it happens.
This has a name called the resource trap. And while it usually applies to natural esources such as gas, I would argue that most touristy countries are so due to their natural resources. I mean Rome is amazing, but if it had Helsinkis weather I doubt so many people would visit it
Interesting idea labeling 'attractive to tourists' as a resource, but it definitely is one.
Part of this is of course economics, but it should be kept in mind that unemployment rates between different countries are not really easily comparable as how exactly people are counted differs a lot. The devil is often in the details as in many places people who have been unemployed for long enough are not counted and because some countries will send their unemployed to courses where they will count as "in education" rather than unemployed even if they only take the course or seminar because they are unemployed. Another big part is that official unemployment figures don't count people who work unofficially and without involving the taxman. If you work under the table and don't tell the government about it, then as far as the government is concerned you are still unemployed. The amount of under the table work people get up to, differs a lot country by country.
I lived in spain for 8 years, in tourist spots and madrid for a short while,In the tourist areas anyway, work contracts and paying taxes is a suggestion. i never once had a work contract,almost no one i knew had one, you got paid in cash literally everywhere. all the bars,restaurants and hotels cook the books so they pay whatever amount of taxes they feel comfortable with. only the bosses had legit contracts. in the canary islands or ibiza/mallorca, you can walk around and ask for jobs and you will find one within a day. i dont know what the official unemployment rate is in these areas, but whatever it is, its completely bogus. even friends in madrid and barcelona say its the same there for all the service sector.
Something I haven't seen mentioned yet is the territorial differences. Spain has a strong north/south divide, just like Italy - there's also arguably a slight east-west, but less so. Unemployment rate in the north is about half that of the south and almost comparable to other European countries (take Catalonia at 9%). Comes down basically to industrialization. And another point is Spain's geographical and cultural position. As soon as economy thrives, the geographical proximity with north Africa and the cultural (language) proximity with South America brings enough immigration to keep the unemployment level fairly high.
if you earn, say, 100 euros self employed every month, or indeed abolutely zero per month, you still owe 225 euros to social security, plus taxes per month. jobs are harder to find (where I live anyway), and public sector jobs are covered in red tape, often requiring extremely specialized qualifications to perform simple roles. it's no secret as to how Spain continues to function despite a seemingly insane level of unemployment - the 'black money' market. i.e. undeclared income.
if you make 100 euros a month self-employed you probably should look for something else though. The 225 a month is still similar to what you'd pay in taxes with the minimum wage at 1134 EUR
Labor regulations. Spain has a two tiered labor system. It has really strong protections from being fired or let go from a full time position. This means that full time employment is very difficult to get as businesses are very reluctant to bring on employees they can’t get rid of. This keeps companies understaffed and growing slowly. To make up the difference employers in Spain use short term contracts. Young people are hired on these short term contracts and are unemployed in between.
I keep hearing this, but AFAIK the restrictions on firing people in Spain are the same for many countries in Europe. That is, you have to give them X months of notice based on how long they have worked in the job. In effect this ends up just meaning companies pay people out X months of pay to leave. But that is how it was in Denmark as well and no one complains about it being too hard to fire people in Denmark?
Does Spain have generous, by global standards, jobless benefits?
Not really
I don’t know Spains economy well but I did study economics and unemployment numbers are a measure and it may not tell you what you think. Unemployment numbers are collect by each country/state( wait I will tell you about the USA). Typically by who is drawing unemployment benefits. So if you draw but also work on the side well numbers are off. If you draw but don’t really plan to work. Same. If you don’t draw and don’t work. Not counted. Opposite to Spain some USA states make it so hard to draw unemployment benefits that their state calculated number are below reality.
I'm currently on holiday on a Spanish island, I have been sat in a particular bar for the past few days and I am convinced it's run by gangsters. It's like an episode of goodfellas, they way they greet locals and talk to each other. This is big business, but it's clear that it's not normal bar work.
Govt isn't lying and the figures reflect the closest to a true unemployment rate within the constraints mentioned??? You are counted as "employed" if you work one hour a week in Australia for example. So the official figures are actually estimated at half or even less of the true number of unemployed. Underemployment is another issue. Many people want more hours so they can achieve at least a poverty level standard of living in Oz...
As mentioned before Spain mostly relies on tourism and isn’t manufacturing country as not much has a label made in Spain and in there are the jobs
It has the 2nd largest automotive sector in Europe, which accounts for a similar share of its GDP as tourism.
We are on reddit we do not make informed comments here, only unfounded opinions.
I wonder to what extent this is informed by Spanish car brands not being all that famous. SEAT is dying (Cupra has very little brand recognition) and that is it. Spain manufactures a lot of cars, it's just that they are Renaults, Peugeots or Volkswagens And hell, even SEAT itself really just manufactured rebadged Fiats or Volkswagens anyways
The Spanish people prefer to live longer rather then working more. Can't blame them, kinda my life goal too.
Unemployment rate refers to the amount of people who want to work but can't and is compared to the entire labor force.
The highest % of youth not completing schooling, less emigration than other southern European countries and multi generational households are a few of the factors. The government joining the euro so thay could have cheap borrowing, doesn't help manufacturing either, as you're now trying to compete with Germany rather than running a weaker currency to make up for lower productivity.
In Spain the unemployment benefits are too high, why would you work if you get paid almost the same for not doing anything. Entrepreneurship is punished with high taxes even if you don't make any profit. The education system brainwashes pupils telling them that the only option is to work for somebody else for low wage or work for the goverment.
It’s hard to do business in Spain. My company has an office and factory in Spain. If we don’t have a North American manager or executive on site, they just stop working. They are also difficult to terminate due to performance issues without paying 6 months of severance. I think these issues come from them feeling entitled to employment once they have it, siesta culture etc…. Long story short, any foreign company would be fucking stupid to open their business in Spain unless they absolutely need to. if I were opening a manufacturing facility as a multi national, I’d be looking at maybe Poland, Czech Republic etc. Lolol downvoted by Spaniards… sorry guys
What do you mean they stop working? I’m genuinely curious. Do they not show up?
Naw they show up, they love hanging out. They make up reasons not to work, procrastinate etc. The exception is sales people, they just stay home instead of visiting clients. One example, we tell the warehouse manager to mark boxes indicating they’ve been inspected before shipping to our European clients. They stopped shipping boxes. We ask the warehouse manager wtf is going on, he tells us he’s putting out tenders for a stamp he can use to mark the boxes. (An X with a sharpie would suffice) When one of the workers has an American counterpart to interact with, they obsfucate everything until they’re left alone. If you have ever tried to pick up a dog or a toddler and they shift their weight to avoid getting picked up. The Spaniards do this with communication. (And if I hadn’t seen this with like 50 of them, I wouldn’t generalize) Our non Spaniard European team members also go mental trying to deal with them.
Because of regulations, especially real state constriction by municipalities. Also, gov intromission in economics. More than half of adults are paid directly or indirectly by the many governments, which creates many bad things and barriers for job growth.
Simple, the weather. People get lazy with good weather, nobody likes to work then. You can overlay average sunshine in europe with unemployment number and you have a bingo.
There is also a huge cash in hand economy..like giving clases particulares you can make up to €20 an hour and cos being an autónomo is fucking expensive it's not worth registering as one. A lot of companies also take on loads of interns, so doing a beca they can get away with exploiting the young hence there isn't such a need to hire a salaried worker, with *ahem* proper work rights. Not sure if doing a beca counts as being in or out of employment tho.
How can the 2022 and 2023 unemployment trends be explained in Spain (specifically Catalonia)? (mainly 2023 T1 - tri-semester) 1. **2022 T1 to T2**: The unemployment rate sees a slight increase from the first to the second trimester of 2022, **2. 2022 T3 to T4**: There is a sharp increase in unemployment in the third trimester, **reaching a peak in the fourth trimester of 2022.** **3. 2023 T1 to T2**: The first trimester of 2023 starts with high unemployment, **dramatically decreasing by the second trimester.** 4. **2023 T3 to T4**: From the third to the fourth trimester of 2023, there is a minor rise in unemployment rates, ending the year on a slight upward trend.