Holiday Bar and Restaurant Workers in Soaring Jobless Total in UK Favourites of Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca in Spain

BAR and restaurant workers in the popular UK holiday destinations of the Costa del Sol and Costa Blanca in Spain are amongst those taking the biggest hit in Spain’s increased jobless figures.

The closure of the hospitality industry and key tourism activities has contributed to the country’s unemployment rate going up to 14.4 per cent in the first three months of the year, according to the National Statistics Institute.

That’s a rise on the 13.8 per cent in the last quarter of 2019, and only factors in the first two weeks of the State of Alarm lockdown in Spain.

Experts believe that the current jobless figures are much higher, with Spain having had one of the worst unemployment rates in the European Union in the wake of the financial crisis, when nearly 27 per cent were out of work in 2013.

Construction has joined tourism and hospitality in being the worst hit professions according to the latest figures.

Social security statistics in early April, suggest that over 550,000 workers had signed on since the start of the lockdown, who were on temporary contracts.

That’s in addition to around 350,000 people who had lost their ‘permanent’ positions.

The Bank of Spain believes that the Covid-19 pandemic could take the unemployment rate up to 21.7 per cent this year, with the Spanish economy reducing by up to 12.4 per cent.

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Alex Trelinski

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