Catalonia closes 2020 with 132,000 unemployed people more than in 2019

BarcelonaCatalonia ended 2020 with a total of 537,900 unemployed people, which amounts to an increase of 31.56% compared to the last quarter of 2019, with 132,100 more unemployed people, which puts the unemployment rate at 13.87%, more than three points above the rate recorded at the end of 2019, 10.45%, according to data from the active population survey (EPA) published on Thursday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). Catalonia is the autonomous community with the highest increase in annual and quarterly unemployment, with 31,300 people out of work more (6.19%).

In Spain as a whole, unemployment has risen by 527,900 people in 2020, which is 16.54% more than in 2019, and the unemployment rate stands at 16.13%, more than two points higher than it was in 2019 (13.78%).

According to the EPA, there were a total of 3,340,600 employed people in Catalonia in the fourth quarter of 2020. This means a slight increase (0.5%) compared to the third quarter, but it also conveys the destruction of 137,600 jobs compared to the fourth quarter of 2019, with a decline in employment of 3.95%.

In the whole State there were, at the close of the fourth quarter of 2020, a total of 19,344,300 employed people. That is, during the year of the pandemic, 622,600 jobs have been destroyed in Spain, and employment has fallen by 3.12%.