Unemployment falls to lowest numbers in a decade

The department, led by Magdalena Valerio – who has radical plans to overhaul employed and self-employed workers' rights since her appointment in early June – says last month saw 27,141 people given jobs and brought the unemployment total down to its lowest figure since December 2008, about a year after the financial crisis started to creep in.

Highest-ever unemployment was seen in February 2013, just 15 months after the previous right-wing PP-led government came into power and five months after they had set up a battery of belt-tightening measures including tax hikes that left residents poorer than ever.

This figure of 5.04 million unemployed has, thankfully, never been reached again, and the number is currently 1.91 million fewer than five-and-a-half years ago.

Women continue to be more likely to be out of a job – 1.85 million still are, compared with 1.28 million men.

But job security and long-term prospects remain elusive – the hike is largely due to the time of year and the greater availability of seasonal work in the tourism industry: only 9.1% of new jobs offered and taken up in July (190,151) were of a permanent nature, with the remaining 90.9% (just under 1.9 million) being temporary contracts ranging from a few days to a few months.

That said, the number of permanent jobs taken up, as opposed to temporary ones, increased by 25% on July last year.

And in real terms, not taking into account the effects of seasonal employment, July only saw 12,183 people find work.

This is shown by figures that reveal the services sector – considered, in Spain, to focus on retail and catering – was the one which saw the largest drop in unemployment, with 16,179 new jobs provided compared with a quarter of that (4,172) in industry and one-eighth of it in building and construction (2,650).

Agriculture saw 571 people acquire jobs, and the figure is likely to rise again in September with the grape harvest.

Of the total, 3,569 people started their first-ever jobs in July.

Many of these were young adults, who – along with the over-45s – are the hardest-hit by unemployment; in fact, the number of under-25s on the dole fell by 2,523 overall.

Whilst unemployment in those aged 25 and over fell much more drastically, by 24,618 people, the difference is partly attributable to the fact that, in Spain, a higher proportion of young adults go to university and staying on for post-graduate study is much more mainstream, meaning the majority are aged at least 22 or even 24 before they seek work, especially if they study the compulsory public-sector exams, or oposiciones, which are full-time and almost impossible to combine with paid employment.

Foreigners on the dole now account for 371,171, having gone down by 8,704 – of those still seeking work, 136,063 are from European Union member States and 235,108 are from elsewhere in the world.

Despite the tourism industry normally meaning extra work available in summer, unemployment has increased in the Balearic Islands, by 656 people.

The same has occurred in the Basque Country and Navarra, with an additional 572 and 515 people respectively signing on.

Galicia, Andalucía and Castilla-La Mancha have seen the greatest falls in unemployment in the last month at 6,653, 5,534 and 2,818 respectively

Permanent jobs are more likely to be full-time than temporary jobs – the latter more often being part-time hours only, and not through workers' choice.

In the case of those jobs which do not have an expiry date and are intended to be indefinite, nearly two-thirds, or 113,954, were full-time compared with 52,068 which were part-time.

This means that although part-time hours have increased in permanent jobs – by 16.46% - so did full-time jobs, by 23.8%.