If you live in Spain or are considering moving, rural Spain may not automatically come to mind as your ideal destination. However, Spain's inland areas of the country, often known as "la España Vaciada" (Empty Spain), may be the perfect place to invest in property, as they seem to have better withstood the consequences of the coronavirus crisis in the job market. In this sense, the percentage of companies with their employees in an ERTE (temporary lay-off) is significantly more positive in the less populated provinces of Spain. This is according to data from the Bank of Spain collected by Voz Pópuli.
The reality is that rural areas have lost the least employment, because the work activities carried out do not depend so much on tourism and the hotel and catering industry, the two sectors most affected by the pandemic.
"In August, the year-on-year fall in employment was more intense in those provinces with a greater weight of commerce in the areas of tourism and the hotel and catering industry. These sectors were strongly affected by mobility restrictions during the confinement period and their levels of activity have not yet been able to recover to the same extent as in other productive branches", states the Bank of Spain in its latest report.
By province, Albacete stands out, having only lost 3.2% of jobs compared to last August, and Cuenca, having registered a fall of 3.5%. On the other hand, the Balearic and Canary Islands have recorded decreases in this sector of 24.4%, with drops of 18% and 15.8% in Las Palmas and Santa Cruz de Tenerife, respectively.
"It can be observed that in the Mediterranean coastal provinces, in Madrid and especially in the Balearic and Canary Islands, the contraction of employment in interannual terms continued in August, well above that observed in the inland provinces", states the report.
With regard to different sectors, the hotel and catering industry is one of the worst affected. This activity is showing 12% fewer employees in August than one year ago, while 10% fewer people were employed in the area of commerce and transport.
Article seen at: Las provincias de la 'España vaciada', las que menos empleos han perdido por la covid (Voz Pópuli)