Spanish jobs’ website, InfoJobs, reckons that unemployment in the Balearics will be 21.6% in 2016 and fall to 19.7% in 2017. Were this to be the case, then the Balearics would have the fifth highest unemployment rate in the country next year behind Andalusia (forecast to be 29%), Extremadura, the Canaries and Castile-La Mancha. In 2017, the Balearics would drop to sixth, with Murcia moving into fifth with a rate similar to that predicted for 2016 (21.5%). Unemployment in other regions is also forecast to fall, the national leader, Andalusia, having a rate of 26.7% by 2017.
Despite these high levels of unemployment, the website identifies Andalusia as being a region which will, in absolute terms, create the third greatest number of new jobs up to 2017. Catalonia and Madrid are forecast to create more (over 100,000, as in Andalusia), but the website doesn’t single out the Balearics for particular mention in this regard. The national level of unemployment, according to the website, will return to 2010 levels (19.1%) by the end of next year and keep falling in 2017 to 17.5%, which would mirror levels in the second quarter of 2009.
InfoJobs points out that employment over the next couple of years will be influenced as consequence of the “habitual seasonal variations” that exist in the Spanish labour market. This seasonality is principally the consequence of the tourism season from approximately Easter through to the end of October and also of set contracts for the likes of teachers as well by job creation for the Christmas period.