The figure is still heartbreaking, but at least it is decreasing throughout the year. Lanzarote has reached 21,420 unemployed in the third quarter of the year, according to the active population survey prepared by the Canary Islands Institute of Statistics of the Government of the Canary Islands (ISTAC). This means that of 76,250 people who are of working age on the island, 28.05 percent are unemployed.
Although the numbers are not good, they are encouraging, since this means that there are 430 fewer people without work on the island, than in the second quarter of 2009, when there were 21,850 unemployed in Lanzarote.
If the comparison is made with the first quarter of the year, in January, February and March 22,600 unemployed were counted, that is, 1,180 more unemployed than in July, August and September. These figures are beginning to be encouraging, although it is also true that the drop in the unemployment rate occurs in summer, a time when employment is normally reactivated.
In a year this situation has changed a lot, according to these data. In addition to almost doubling the number of unemployed, in the first quarter of 2008 the unemployment rate was much lower than in the third quarter, since in January of last year, the effects of the economic crisis were not yet noticeable.
Thus, the unemployment rate rose throughout the year. In this sense, while in the first quarter of 2008 there were 9,530 unemployed, in the second the figure rose to 10,970 euros and in the third to 12,140.
