Two and a half years lost. That is what the coronavirus pandemic in Andalusia has meant, in terms of employment. And only in year I of the Covid. According to the latest Active Population Survey (EPA) published by the Andalusian Institute of Statistics, the community closed the year 2020 with a 907,200 unemployed, a figure that had not been reached since June 2018, when 910,000 unemployed were registered in Andalusia.
The total confinement as of March, the successive states of alarm, restrictions and the consequent collapse of economic activity have resulted in 83,400 bad stops, which represents an increase of 10.12%, and the loss of 53,000 jobs. Almost nine jobs, of all those lost last year in Spain, were destroyed in Andalusia.
The result is that the unemployment rate was at the end of December in the Andalusian community in the 22,74%, an escalation of almost two points that dangerously brings the region closer to the symbolic (and tragic) threshold of one million unemployed that it dragged until the end of 2017.
By sexes, Andalusian women get the worst of it. They are the majority of all unemployed and their unemployment rate is much higher than the national average than the male one.
Thus, of the 907,000 unemployed with whom 2020 closed, 492,700 are women, while the other 414,500 are men. The male unemployment rate was 18.98% -which represents 4.81 points above the national average-, while the female unemployment rate was 27.27% or, which is the same, 8.94 points above the average for Spain.
In addition to being female, unemployment in Andalusia is essentially young, since by age, the unemployment rate is stratospheric between youth population. To the extent that among those under 20 years of age, the unemployment rate is 76.2% and among those under 25, 52.2%. Between 25 and 54 years old, the rate is 21.4% and among those over 54 years old, 17.8%.
Once the factors of sex and age are combined, the conclusion is that young Andalusian women are by far the most punished group.
But the job destruction in the year of Covid-19 not only distinguishes men and women, young people or adults. In addition, it treated the eight Andalusian provinces unequally, so that between the province with the highest unemployment rate and the one with the least, there is a difference of almost eight points.
At the head of the black list would be the province of Huelva, which ended last year with an unemployment rate of 27.16% and at the other extreme, that of Malaga, with 19.32%. Between one and the other, Cádiz registered 24.91% of the population unemployed; Granada, 24.84%; Córdoba, 23.75%; Jaà © n, 22.75%; Seville, 22.44% and AlmerÃa, 21.15%.
However, despite being bad, the data on the evolution of unemployment in Andalusia during the past year are not as bad as in the rest of the country. Especially in the last quarter of the year, when the behavior of the labor market was significantly best in the Andalusian community in relative terms, of course.
In the last three months of 2020, unemployment in Andalusia fell by 25,100 people in relation to the previous quarter, which means 2.6%, and employment increased by 97,800 people, 3.2%.
Considering all the past year, the region also experienced a better evolution than the national average, given that while the country as a whole experienced a 16.5% growth in unemployment (527,900 people to 3,719,800 unemployed), the rise in Andalusia was only 10.1%.
In this sense, the Andalusian Regional Government has underlined the better performance of the autonomous labor market and that despite the bad figures, Andalusia loses employed persons and its unemployment rises at a slower rate, in the words of the Secretary General for Employment and Labor Autonomous, Josà © AgustÃn González.
For its part, the Confederación de Empresarios de Andalucía (CEA) called on the administrations to make a gestión social of the pandemic given the seriousness of the unemployment data, also claiming direct aid to companies based on the particularities of each sector.
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