April Brings Sharpest Ever Drop in Spanish Unemployment

April Brings Sharpest Ever Drop in Spanish Unemployment

Unemployment continues to fall as the summer months approach

The Spanish Labour Ministry announced on Thursday at the amount of unemployed people in Spain dropped 3.9% in April, the sharpest dropin unemployment ever recorded in the country.

The official data released by the government shows around 129,281 people were employed in Spain in April, chipping away at the amount of unemployed people and     leaving just 3.57 million Spanish people out of work.

3.57 million people might be a little high for a country the size of Spain, there has been an encouraging trend towards job creation over the past 15 months; which is a great sign that the Spanish economy is thriving.

The king of job creation in April was the tourism sector, in particular restaurants and hotels. There was no stopping jobs being created in the run-up to the Easter holidays. Around 130,000 jobs were created in all, around 96,672 of them in services.

Other industries performing well in April were construction, real estate, and agriculture as Spain sets up for the Summer season by giving these economic sectors a boost.

A survey released this week by the Institute for National Statistics (INE) showed the rate of expansion for the Spanish service sector. The sector was adding jobs at the fastest rate in over two years, becoming the driving force behind the record increase in employment figures.

The Labour Ministry confirmed the number of people registered as paying social security rose 1.18% in April, equalling a growth of around 212,216 extra people.

Spain attracts 1.4 million British tourists in April

Spain attracts 1.4 million British tourists in April

When compared to the statistics, the British tourist inflow to Spain increased by 18.3% in April.

Although people initially anticipated that Spain will see lesser tourists this April as the Easter holidays fell in March this year instead of April, the results regarding tourist info in Spain were surprising as per the statistics published by the central government of Spain, which indicate it to be otherwise.

In tandem with the number of tourist inflow from UK, international tourists from other countries to Spain also increased and the total tourist inflow stood at over 6.1 million, which is a 11.3% increase when compared to the statistics of the previous year. Every one among four international tourists who visit Spain is from UK and the number of tourists from UK also found a steep rise as it rose by 18.3% to 1.4 million. Tourist inflow from France and Germany also increased, but it did not increase as much as the tourist inflow from UK did. Tourists from France stood at 1.09 million, which was a 14.4% hike when compared to the previous year and the total tourists from Germany increased by a mere 2.9%, taking the total to 876,000.

The fourth highest foreign tourists to Spain were from Scandinavia, with the count being 408,500. Netherlands occupied the fifth spot this year, pushing Italy below and the increase of tourists from Netherlands was a whopping 37.4%, which corresponded to 322,000.

The total number of tourists from UK visiting Spain since the starting of 2016 increased by 19.4%, taking the count to 4.04 million, which attributes to the overall 13% hike in the foreign visitors. In total, Spain has attracted 18.1 million tourists till April. Tourists of Irish and Dutch origin have increased significantly this year, and the rise is 25.6% and 25.5% respectively.

The cumulative total of France and Germany are the second and third highest, which stands at 2.67 million after a 9.5% increase in the case of France while the count increased to 2.61 million or 6.7%, in the case of Germany.

Within Spain, the most preferred destination among foreign tourists in April, the month in which there is a transition from winter to spring, changed from Canary Islands to Catalunya. Nearly 25% of the foreign visitors preferred to visit Catalunya in April and the second preferred destination was Canaries, which stood at 17.5%, followed by Andalucia at 16.4%, Balearics at 12.6%, Comunidad Valenciana at 10.5% and Madrid at 9.1%.

The increase in the percentage varied from 2.5% to 17.7% spread across the 17 popular tourist destinations of Spain.

The significance of British tourists to Spain is clearly evident in the recent bulletin they had published. In most of the regions, UK was the major supplier of foreign tourists and the British were also among the second most tourists to other regions. It was only in the case of Madrid that UK did occupy neither the first nor the second places. However, this can be justified by the fact that people traveling from different continents prefer to stay in the capital of the nation they visit rather than any other place.

Spanish Property Prices up 29% in April

Spanish Property Prices up 29% in April

The Spanish property market is continuing to improve despite the current political problems affecting Spain. The latest figures published Thursday by the Spanish central statistics unit would seem to confirm that the Spanish political situation isn’t affecting the real estate market at all. A total of 35,199 sales were made in April, a 29% rise over April of last year.

Property prices in Spain and the Costa del Sol

have continued to rise.

This total is the number of transactions that were registered in April and as such includes property sales that were finalised in previous months. Even if this is the case it can still be assumed that the data reflects the confidence in the real estate sector after the general election of last year ended with no clear winner. This is also the single highest figure from one month in over five years, except for a rush to finish sales before changes to tax concessions were introduced in 2012. These sales were then reflected in the sales figures for January and February in 2013.

Another encouraging statistic is that the year-to-date sales for the first four months of 2016 show that 134,312 properties have changed hands so far this year, a rise of 13.8% over this period last year. The current twelve month running total stands at 370,793, a rise of 12.7% compared to the end of April 2015.

This rise was felt in all 17 of the Spanish regions. Some performed better than others with a rise of 61.7% seen in the Balerics, a 51.6% rise seen in Galicia, a 46.6% rise in Comunidad Valencia and a 44.2% rise in Murcia. The areas that saw the most overall transactions were the Comunidad Valencia with 138 and the Balerics with 129. Figures of over 100 were also seen in Madrid, La Rioja and significantly in Andalucía. The national average came in at 96 sales per 100,000 people.

Spanish Hotels Enjoy a Great April With Signs Suggesting It Can Only Get Better

Spanish Hotels Enjoy a Great April With Signs Suggesting It Can Only Get Better

Hotels in Spain saw a bumper number of guests in April when compared to last year and it’s only going to improve.

Hotels in Costa del Sol are all full which is a

positive sign moving forward

Even though Easter was in March this year Spanish hotels received quite the windfall from plenty of tourism during April. Occupancy rate records were actually broken thanks to the influx of British holidaymakers.

Data has been released by the Spanish National Statistics Institute (INE) that shows the number of people staying in the country overnight in April increased by 1.3% over last year to 23.4 million.

Given how it is usually Easter that sees this bump in tourism these figures came as a real swerve. This rise in tourism would seem to confirm what people have been saying for a while now; 2016 will be a record breaking year for the Spanish tourism industry.

When you only take the data for foreign tourists then there is actually an 11.5% rise in tourists from outside the country compared to April of last year as just under four million people stayed overnight in Spain.

Holidaymakers are also staying in Spain for longer in general. The data showed that the average stay increased 1.2% to 3.1 nights per person. This is in spite of the average cost per night rising 3.3% to €73.50.

The UK remained the biggest source of foreign tourists as roughly 692,000 Brits visited for 3.6 million overnight stays. Next were the 595,000 Germans with their 3.26 million overnight stays, the 570,000 French with 1.85 million overnight stays, and 225,000 Italians for 623,000 overnight stays.

This number of German visitors was up 4.8% compared to last year but the British remained the dominant source with an 18.1% rise in British tourists over the year.

As April can stay a little chilly in some areas of Spain it’s not surprising at all to hear that the Canary Islands, which are warm all year round, where the top destination and accounted for just over 31% of the overnight stays. Andalucía and Catalonia competed to be second place with 18% of the visitors, a percentage that will surely rise as the temperature does.