The first quarter of the year does not usually bring good news in terms of employment. It comes after the Christmas campaign and before the start of the summer season has been activated. Therefore, three months that usually lose employed people and gain unemployed people, as has also happened on this occasion. From January to March, 170,300 jobs were lost, according to the data from the Active Population Survey (EPA) published this morning, and the unemployment rate increased to 10.83%. This represents an increase of 231,500 unemployed people.
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It is the confirmation, once again, that the first quarter is always the worst of the year in terms of employment. In the following quarters, the boost first from summer and then from Christmas allows for the recovery from this initial slump. This has been achieved in recent years. This time, the absolute figures are more forceful, both in the fall of employment and in the rise of unemployment.
The loss of employed people compared to the previous quarter is higher than that of the same period in previous years. For example, it practically doubles that of the first quarter of 2025, when there were 92,000 fewer employed people, largely a product of the strong seasonality of the Spanish economy.
As always in this period, services are the ones that register the greatest loss of employment, which is only very partially compensated by increases in employment in other areas, such as industry, construction, and agriculture.
For its part, the unemployment rate, which ended last year below 10%, has risen again to 10.83%, the highest figure in a year. It is a negative figure, although it is true that it is the lowest in a first quarter of the year since 2008. We came from a good mark, an unemployment rate below 10%, which had not been achieved since before the financial crisis, since 2008, although there are options to fall below this barrier again in the summer. A rate that we have turned into a symbolic element of the good performance of the economy, but which, however, let us remember, remains well above those of European countries.
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In this way, the number of unemployed people skyrockets. This represents an increase of 231,500 in these three months, bringing the total number of unemployed to 2.7 million. Here too, the increase is clearly higher than that which occurred in previous years during this period of the year. It represents almost 40,000 more than the increase in 2025. To be precise, it is its largest increase in a first quarter since 2013.
This increase in unemployed people has also been influenced by the repeated increase in the active population, the group of employed people or those seeking employment. There are already 25 million people, which is a record. In this quarter, they increased moderately, by 61,200 more people, and with a very particular distribution: all the increase comes from foreigners, while among Spaniards it even decreased.
From the Ministry of Economy, they want to highlight the seasonally adjusted data, that is, without the calendar effect, according to which, this first quarter would mean an increase in employment of 96,800 employed people. Based on this, and noting that in seasonally adjusted terms, 22.5 million employed people have been reached, the First Vice President and Minister of Economy, Carlos Cuerpo, states that “the data confirm a labor market capable of continuing to create higher quality employment in a complex international context”.
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