The employers’ association of temporary work companies and employment agencies, Asempleo, warns of the high figures of long-term unemployment in Spain and highlights that three out of ten unemployed people have been looking for work for more than two years. This is a group of particular concern because “it puts many people at risk of being expelled from the labor market.”
According to the report, long-term unemployment (more than a year looking for work) has managed to reduce its weight in the total number of unemployed by more than seven points compared to the last peak value, registered in the second quarter of 2021, to stand at 41.7%, which translates into 1,305,000 unemployed who have been out of work for more than a year.
Another risk factor that employers extract from their analysis of the composition of long-term unemployment is the age distribution of this group, since more than half of the unemployed over 50 years of age have been unemployed for more than a year.
In this sense, in the weight distribution of the long-term unemployed over the total number of unemployed by age range, those between 20 and 24 years old represent 28.5%, while those between 50 and 54 years old represent 54.9%, that is, the total bulk of unemployed people who have been looking for a job for more than a year increases as the age range increases.
Asempleo points out that this situation is “doubly dangerous”, since these people are not only unemployed with a job market in serious difficulties to incorporate them, but they are also in their last stage of contribution for their retirement.
By gender, women are also the ones who have the most problems finding a job when they are over 45 years of age, while men under 25 years of age are the ones who find it more difficult to do so.
At a general level, women are the ones with the highest proportion of long-term unemployed, with 42.6% compared to 40.6% of the male gender.
On the other hand, almost 12% of the long-term unemployed are looking for their first job, a situation that, warns the employer, has not occurred since the start of the financial crisis in 2008.
“It is essential to mobilize all resources, both public and private, in order to provide a solution to a large group of people who, being active in the search for employment, cannot find a way to fit into a labor market that offers few possibilities to a large part of our workforce”, has indicated the president of Asempleo, Andreu Cruañas.
