The first quarter, as usually happens, has been negative for employment in Catalonia, with the Christmas campaign closed and with less activity in the services sector.
As revealed by the EPA this Friday, Catalonia has 3.78 million employed people, 17,000 less than at the start of the year, while 396,100 people are unemployed, 12,800 more than in the previous quarter. The unemployment rate remains at 9.48%, almost five tenths more than the previous 8.97%.
By province, the lowest unemployment is in Lleida, with an unemployment rate of 7.72%, compared to 8.67% in Barcelona. Girona (12.47%) and Tarragona (13.40%) are in the worst situation.
If we look at unemployment by sex, men have an unemployment rate of 8.74%, while it is somewhat higher for women, at 10.31%. In absolute terms there are 194,100 unemployed men and 202,000 women in the same situation.
In Spain as a whole, in the first quarter, 140,000 jobs were lost and 117,000 people joined the unemployment list. These are figures higher than the average of the last ten years.
