Spanish Workers Keen to Stay in Home Country While Looking for a Job

Spanish Workers Keen to Stay in Home Country While Looking for a Job

Spanish workers just love Spain

Despite the love affair that British and northern Europeans have with Spain, from the climate and property, to the food and beaches in Spain, one thing the Spanish have that Brits aren’t interested in is unemployment.

The Spanish economy has been struggling lately which hasn’t helped people find and keep their jobs. It also means that wages are not on the increase like they are in other countries in Northern Europe.

As a result you’d be hard pressed to find a Brit who was eager to move to Spain to find a job. Recent studies have shown that Brits are not willing to move anywhere in order to find work and would rather stay at home.

The study discovered that 98.52% of Brits said they expected their next job would be in the UK. This was the highest percentage of any nationality from the EU.

The poll was of the EU15, or the 15 strongest economies in the European Union. It showed that the UK was also the most desirable country for people looking to find work outside of their own country. Just over a third of people polled said if they were to work abroad they would want to work in the UK.

One of the reasons that the UK is such a favourable destination is undoubtedly that most Europeans who are of working age are able to speak English as a second language. The UK also has more relaxed labour laws and higher wages when compared to the rest of the EU.

Economist Mariano Mamertino of Indeed concluded that the average Brit is far less likely to want to work in Europe than the average European wants to work in Britain. The nationalities that expressed the most interest in working in Britain were the Irish (12.7%) the Greeks (9.5%), and the Danes (7.1). In fact the Britons that said they wouldn’t mind working abroad would rather leave Europe altogether and work in the United States or India.

When you consider there are currently millions of Brits living in Spain it becomes clear that those most likely to become an expat are people aged over 45 who have enough financial stability to not work again and become a resident of Spain.

Spain still scored high in terms of people who want to stay and find work in their own country however. Over 93% of Spaniards who were polled said they would want to work in Spain, a figure that was only beaten by the UK, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Germany. It did place them above Finland and Sweden though.

The good news for all these Spaniards wanting to stay is that the Spanish job market is improving. 58,000 jobs were created in Spain which reduced the Spanish unemployment figure to 4.09 million. This is the lowest unemployment has been in over six years.

As the economy slowly recovers Spain is still one of the healthiest places to live in the world with an average temperature over 20C, no wonder the Spanish enjoy their own country and don’t look to leave as the cost of living in Spain is excellent.