SPAIN
Unemployment, hiring and Social Security affiliation
In June, unemployment dropped for the fifth consecutive month, by 94,727 persons, to a total of 4,120,304 persons, the smallest drop in a month of June in the last three years.
This drop was generalized, with the excep-tion of a 3.6% increase (7,027 personas) in agriculture. Among people with no previous employment, there was a drop of 3.7% (-14,022), in industry it was 3.4% (-14,139), in construction 2.4% (-11,706) and in services 2,2% (-61,887).
Unemployment dropped in all the regional autonomous communities, especially in Catalonia (20,952 fewer unemployed), Ma-drid (-14,090) and Castilla y León (-8,255).
In June hiring increased by 13.7%, with 1,726,117 new contracts, the greatest number in a month since October of 2007. Of these contracts, 7.3% were permanent (126,856), some 15% more than in June of 2014.
With regard to the previous month, Social Security affiliation increased by 35,085 per-sons (+0.2% over the previous month), to a total of 17,256,395 contributing members.