Spain closed 2022 as the country with the highest youth unemployment in the entire European Union. Practically, 1 in 3 young people are unemployed in this country, which concentrates most of the metropolitan areas that capitalize on this problem in the European Union. Taking a look at the 2021 data, A Coruña is one of them, entering a Top-20 of dubious honor as one of the biggest unemployment black spots among those under 25 in all of Europe.
According to a Eurostat report published by El Mundo, up to 10 cities in Spain are part of this ranking. The worst records are for Las Palmas (58.5 percent), Santa Cruz de Tenerife (51.5) and Seville (51). In addition to the Canary Islands, the hardest-hit area is Andalusia, since we must also add the areas of Cádiz (48.9), Córdoba (47.2), Málaga (42.7) and Granada (40.4).
The highest concentration of youth unemployment is concentrated in the south of Spain, with Alicante-Elche joining the 10 areas with the most problems for youth to join working life.
Of this Spanish Top-10, only two of the cities are in the north, which generally enjoys better health in this regard. Bilbao registered 38.5 youth unemployment when 2021 ended, while A Coruña, the only Galician city that appears on the list, goes to 40.9 percent.
Much of this data relates to the impact of the pandemic and the slow recovery that is still taking place now. If we take into account the worst moments after the financial crisis of the past decade, the year 2013, repeated the majority of metropolitan areas. They managed to learn their lesson in areas like Valencia, Oviedo, Gijón or Murcia, while the only one that took a step back to fall into this classification is A Coruña.