The latest Active Population Survey reveals that 60% of Spains six million unemployed have not worked for one year, and the proportion of people without work for three or more years still continues to grow.
In 2013, the rise in lomg-term unemployment was 21% and now one out of every five job seekers has been out of work for at least three years. The positive spin on this is that the rise in 2012 was 22% and before that was rising by 40%, but this is hardly consolation for those long-term unemployed who are finding it increasingly more difficult to rejoin the labour market.
This situation is expected to continue for quite some time to come, one of the worst legacies of the financial crisis. Those who have gone more than three years without finding work no longer have the right to unemployment benefit or, in the majority of cases, subsidies relating to job-seeking.
Recent studies have concluded that the probability of finding work decreases abruptly in line with the number of years a person spends out of the labour market.