Unemployment in Spain
The Need for Education Reform to Remedy Spanish Unemployment
April 1, 2014
Spain has led a legacy as a significant world power in Europe and at some moments in History, the world. Spain conquered the oceans with Christopher Columbus’s travels, started dynasties that created Charles IV’s Holy Roman Empire. Although, like all great dynasties have been fated to do, the Empire fell from the leading Empire of the world and eventually in Europe. It wasn’t until after the Dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, when Spain was again able to resume its share of economic and political strength in Europe. With a new democratic monarchical system and an economy that quickly adapted to the international market, Spain was able to rapidly assume it role as a European leader once again. In 1986 Spain joined the European Union, and thanks to an economic boom in the construction business in the 2000s, Spain’s economy and society accelerated into a bigger world power. Currently economically speaking, Spain has the fifth biggest economy of the countries in the European Union, with Gross Domestic Product over one million Euros, as is set to have the fourteenth highest GDP in the world by 2015. However, after the world economic crisis of 2008, Spain was not exempt from the affects that the crisis was to bring for all countries. The era knows as el period de bonanza as the Spanish called it came to an end, and a new era known to be called la crisis came to birth. Although there are many results of the economic crash of 2008, it is in my opinion that in Spain, the most devastating of these effects is the unemployment rate. Spain’s unemployment rate is currently at 26.03%, the second highest rate right behind Greece’s staggering 27.5% unemployment rate. Even more staggering is the fact that Spain has the highest youth unemployment rate of the EU with around 51% of Spanish young people aged between 20 and 24 listed as unemployed. There have been multiple reasons given for the recent
April 1, 2014
Spain has led a legacy as a significant world power in Europe and at some moments in History, the world. Spain conquered the oceans with Christopher Columbus’s travels, started dynasties that created Charles IV’s Holy Roman Empire. Although, like all great dynasties have been fated to do, the Empire fell from the leading Empire of the world and eventually in Europe. It wasn’t until after the Dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975, when Spain was again able to resume its share of economic and political strength in Europe. With a new democratic monarchical system and an economy that quickly adapted to the international market, Spain was able to rapidly assume it role as a European leader once again. In 1986 Spain joined the European Union, and thanks to an economic boom in the construction business in the 2000s, Spain’s economy and society accelerated into a bigger world power. Currently economically speaking, Spain has the fifth biggest economy of the countries in the European Union, with Gross Domestic Product over one million Euros, as is set to have the fourteenth highest GDP in the world by 2015. However, after the world economic crisis of 2008, Spain was not exempt from the affects that the crisis was to bring for all countries. The era knows as el period de bonanza as the Spanish called it came to an end, and a new era known to be called la crisis came to birth. Although there are many results of the economic crash of 2008, it is in my opinion that in Spain, the most devastating of these effects is the unemployment rate. Spain’s unemployment rate is currently at 26.03%, the second highest rate right behind Greece’s staggering 27.5% unemployment rate. Even more staggering is the fact that Spain has the highest youth unemployment rate of the EU with around 51% of Spanish young people aged between 20 and 24 listed as unemployed. There have been multiple reasons given for the recent