Wednesday 27 July 2011

Baix Penedès has the Highest Unemployment Rate in Catalonia


We already know that that the Penedès comarques Garraf and Anoia did very poorly in the unemployment statistics of the province of Barcelona for 2010. Now, the figures for the whole of Catalonia have been published, and it turns out that Baix Pededès (within the province of Tarragona) is the comarca which leads this sad ranking. There the unemployment rate at the end of 2010 was 25,2%, compared to the Catalan average of 18,0%.

The root problem here is the labour market legislation which is regulated from the central level and, personally, I am totally disappointed with the Spanish socialist government’s repeated lack of initiative. Spain’s current rigid system gives a good protection for a smaller and smaller group of “insiders”, while what we need to generate prosperity in society is a legislation which removes disincentives to employing the now scarily big group of “outsiders”.

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Read more in Spanish: LaVanguardia

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