Spain’s unemployment rate has been significantly higher than the rest of the EU for decades. Recently it has dropped down to 11-12% but it has also had long stints of being 20%+ over the past two decades. Spain seems like it has a great geographical position, stable government, educated population with good social cohesion, so why is the unemployment rate so eye poppingly high?
In: Economics
Part of this is of course economics, but it should be kept in mind that unemployment rates between different countries are not really easily comparable as how exactly people are counted differs a lot.
The devil is often in the details as in many places people who have been unemployed for long enough are not counted and because some countries will send their unemployed to courses where they will count as “in education” rather than unemployed even if they only take the course or seminar because they are unemployed.
Another big part is that official unemployment figures don’t count people who work unofficially and without involving the taxman.
If you work under the table and don’t tell the government about it, then as far as the government is concerned you are still unemployed.
The amount of under the table work people get up to, differs a lot country by country.
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