MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th January, 2021) The unemployment rate in Spain increased by 16.13 percent in 2020, with 622,600 jobs lost due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Statistics Institute (INE) said on Thursday.
The current unemployment rate is the highest since 2017 when it reached 16.55 percent, according to INE.
In absolute terms, by the end of 2020 the number of the unemployed in Spain amounted to 3.71 million people, which is almost 528,000 more than in 2019. It is the largest increase since 2012.
All the economic sectors were affected by the coronavirus crisis. The service industry was the most hit, where 279,500 people lost their jobs.
As for the Spanish regions, the INE reported that the autonomous communities of Catalonia, Madrid and Andalusia were the most affected. On average, about 100,000 people were unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
