Canary Islands closed 2024 with a total of 156,344 unemployed people registered with the Public Employment Service, “something that had not happened since February 2008, placing our autonomous community below the barrier of 160,000 unemployed”, stressed the Deputy Minister of Employment of the regional Executive, Isabel León.
Compared to December 2023, the Archipelago registered 11,501 more people with jobs than a year ago (-6.85%). The Deputy Minister pointed out that “since the worst moment of the coronavirus crisis, figures like these have not been recorded, which are an incentive to continue deploying policies that support the growth of the labor market in our region.”
In one year, unemployment fell in all economic sectors, with Agriculture leading the decrease in percentage terms with 24.95%, which means that a total of 844 people found work in this activity, followed by Hospitality, which decreased by 5.61%, that is, 1,377 fewer people.
Regarding the monthly evolution, Isabel León explained that “unemployment decreased in December by 2,541 people compared to the previous month (-1.60%), while the number of unemployed who had been looking for a job for between one and two years decreased by 596 people (-0.82%)”.
Taking the situation a year ago as a reference, unemployment, at the end of December, decreased in all the islands. La Gomera registered the largest decrease in percentage terms with 20.76%, which translates into 269 fewer unemployed people, followed by Lanzarote (-8.28%); Fuerteventura (-7.34%); Gran Canaria (-7.29%); Tenerife (-6.37%); El Hierro (-4.83%) and La Palma (-2.47%). In absolute decreases, Gran Canaria and Tenerife are the islands whose decreases are between 5,312 and 4,600 people, respectively.
Regarding hiring, the autonomous community ended the year with 3,733 more contracts (6.92%) compared to the data registered in December 2023. Of the contracts formalized last year, 21,970 were indefinite (38.09%).
For her part, the director of the Canarian Employment Service (SCE), María Teresa Ortega, highlighted that “the balance is positive in all respects, both in terms of unemployment and job creation” and stressed the importance that training programs for employment will have in this year and the need to reduce the distance between “what the labor market demands and the training received by people who are looking for a job at the present time”, she pointed out.
Ortega recalled that almost five thousand people, specifically 4,909 belonging to the group of long-term unemployed, joined the labor market in the last twelve months. In 2024 there was also a decrease in unemployment among young people aged 25 in 754 people (-8.09%), while unemployment among the unemployed over 45 years old closed in December with 6,196 fewer people than a year ago (-5.97%).
