(Chart from El Pais with thanks… though please label the axes in the future. It drove us a little crazy.)
That’s more than six million Spaniards out of work in the first quarter of 2013. As Reuters said, that raises the jobless rate in the eurozone’s fourth biggest economy to 27.2 per cent, the highest since records began in the 1970s. The full history, courtesy of ReutersJamie:
We can argue about the number of people not in education, employment or training (so-called “NEETs”), or falling Spanish yields, but that number (and others like it throughout Europe), is incredibly stark and a more potent argument against the logic and political tenability of austerity than any Excel error.
From the FT on Thursday:
The people left behind are coalescing into the hard core of a new Spanish underclass that will become more difficult to dissolve with every month that passes. Some 640,000 jobless Spaniards below 30 are – despite their age – already classified as long-term unemployed. Economists warn that the rapidly swelling ranks of young, low-skilled unemployed pose a challenge to the country that is likely to outlive the crisis by many years. What is at stake is not just Spain’s long-term economic prospects but also the social and political fabric of a society that has faced the downturn – at least until now – with remarkable equanimity and solidarity.
“The question is not whether or not we will come out of this crisis,” says Manuel de la Rocha, an economist at Fundación Alternativas, a Madrid-based think-tank. “The real question is what kind of country we will be living in 10 years from now. And there is almost no discussion of this.”
Related links:
Global Insight: Politics draws out accidental truth on austerity Europe – FT
Spain: Stuck on the sidelines – FT