Unemployment and employment

📉 Unemployment and employment

How many people are looking for work and cannot find it, who is hit hardest, where and for how long. Almost all the figures come from the INE's Labour Force Survey (EPA), which is published every quarter and measures unemployment using international criteria: the unemployment rate is the percentage of the labour force (people who are working or looking for work) who do not have a job. The latest figure is for 2026-T2. The quarterly data are not seasonally adjusted, so each quarter is compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

Unemployment rate: Spain 10.4 EU 5.9OECD 4.9France 7.5Portugal 6.2Germany 3.7Italy 6.4Morocco 9US 4.2China 4.6 Netherlands 3.9 % of labour force · 2025 · World Bank (WDI, ILO modelled estimate) All countries →

Youth unemployment rate (15-24): Spain 24.7 EU 16.2OECD 11.6France 18.9Portugal 20.2Germany 6.9Italy 20.5Morocco 21.9US 9.3China 15.8 Netherlands 8.8Greece 21.4 % of labour force aged 15-24 · 2025 · World Bank (WDI, ILO modelled estimate) All countries →

Employment rate (15 and over): Spain 51.5 EU 53.9OECD 57.6France 51.2Portugal 54.6Germany 58.3Italy 46.2Morocco 40US 59.1China 61.6 Netherlands 64.6Sweden 59 % of population aged 15 and over · 2025 · World Bank (WDI, ILO modelled estimate) All countries →

Unemployment, employment and activity since 2002

Unemployment peaked in 2013-T1, with 26.9% of the labour force out of work; the lowest point in the series was in 2007-T2 (7.9%). The current 9.9% is the lowest rate since 2008-T1. The employment rate measures what share of the population aged 16 or over is in work, and the activity rate what share is working or looking for work.

Who is hit hardest by unemployment?

In 2026-T2, the unemployment rate is 11.0% among women and 8.8% among men; 41.1% among 16- to 19-year-olds looking for work compared with 8.6% among those aged 25 to 54; and 16.4% among non-EU foreign nationals compared with 9.0% among Spanish nationals.

The highest youth unemployment in the series, 56.9% of the labour force under 25, was reached in 2013-T1. A word of caution: many young people are studying and are not in the labour force, so the rate is calculated only on those who are working or looking for work.

By level of education

The more education, the less unemployment. Annual average for 2025, population aged 16 or over.

Long-term unemployment and households with no income from work

A long-term unemployed person has been looking for work for a year or more. Today they make up 36% of the unemployed, or 3.5% of the whole labour force. The second line is the percentage of households with at least one economically active member in which all active members are unemployed.

Temporary contracts and unwanted part-time work

Percentage of employees on a temporary contract and percentage of part-time workers who work part time because they have not found a full-time job. Temporary employment peaked in 2005-T3 (34.5%); in 2021, the year before the 2022 labour reform came into force, it averaged 25.3%, and today it stands at 15.1%. Intermittent permanent contracts (fijos discontinuos) count as permanent in the EPA.

By region and province

Average of the last four quarters, to smooth out sampling noise in the EPA for small territories. The region with the highest unemployment is Ceuta (24.0%) and the one with the lowest Cantabria (7.3%). By province, the range runs from Huesca (5.8%) to Ceuta (24.0%). Click on a territory to see its profile.

The monthly figure: registered unemployment

Every month the SEPE (Public Employment Service) counts the jobseekers registered as unemployed at employment offices. This does not match the EPA (some unemployed people do not register, and some registered people are not counted as unemployed by the EPA), but it is published sooner, every month, and is available down to municipality level. Here, per 100 inhabitants aged 16 to 64. In 2026-08 there were 2,355,531 registered unemployed, 70,512 fewer than a year earlier.

Municipalities with 20,000 or more inhabitants

Registered unemployed in 2026-08 per 100 inhabitants (total population from the municipal register).

Spain compared with Europe

Eurostat's seasonally adjusted monthly unemployment rates, comparable across countries. In 08/2026 the Spanish rate is 10.0%, 1.6 times the EU average (6.1%); for under-25s it is 22.7% compared with 15.4%.

Wages are covered in Wages and public-sector employment in Public employment.

Sources: INE, Labour Force Survey (EPA): unemployment rates by sex and age (65219), activity, unemployment and employment rates by province (65349), unemployment by age and autonomous community (65334), unemployment by nationality (65336), unemployment by level of education (66000), unemployed by duration of job search (65236), unemployment in households (65276), employees by type of contract (65194) and part-time workers by reason (65152). SEPE, registered unemployment by municipality (open data, annual CSV); population aged 16 to 64 from the INE's Continuous Population Statistics. Eurostat, une_rt_m. The long-term unemployment rate is calculated as the unemployment rate times the percentage of the unemployed who have been looking for work for a year or more.