The Canary Islands will be the autonomous community that destroys the most jobs by the end of 2009, since it is estimated that 11.5 percent of the jobs created will cease to exist when the year ends and net jobs will continue to be lost in 2010 despite a certain relief in the fall of economic activity being foreseen. Furthermore, and derived from the above, it will be the region where per capita consumption will fall the most, falling 7 percent by the end of the year, according to the forecasts handled by Caixa Catalunya and Hispalink.
Until July of this year, 273,100 people residing in the Canary Islands are unemployed, which represents a rate of almost 26 percent of the active population, being the most punished region in Spain in this section. According to Caixa Catalunya, 11.5 percent of the jobs generated in the Islands will be destroyed when the year ends, the highest record in all of Spain, followed by Catalonia with 7.9 percent and Andalusia, with 7.8 percent of jobs destroyed.
Derived from the high unemployment rate, consumption will also suffer. According to the same sources, each Canary Islander will spend 7,560 euros in 2009, the lowest record in the entire national territory. At the other extreme, Catalonia will continue to have the highest per capita consumption in the State, with 11,967 euros, followed by Madrid, and Navarra and the Basque Country.
In this way, it can be concluded that the Canary Islands will be, if not the most, one of the regions most punished by the crisis in all of Spain, since these negative data must be added to a fall in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of 2.4 percent, which would be in line with the Spanish average. Only Castilla La Mancha, Catalonia (-2.7 percent), Andalusia, Valencia (-2.6), and Cantabria (-2.5) will suffer a greater fall.
TOURISM AND CONSTRUCTION
The recovery prospects are also not very encouraging for the Canary Islands and in general, for all those communities that grew in the heat of tourism and construction, after the bursting of the real estate bubble and the negative behavior in the arrival of tourists and the spending they make in the destination.
So much so that the Hispalink report considers it "evident" that such a significant drop in tourist demand in an economy with such a strong weight in this sector also transfers its effects very significantly on the labor market.
"The comparison of the number of employed, data from the Active Population Survey, from the first quarter of 2009 with respect to the first quarter of 2008 are a clear reflection of the loss of activity that is quantified in almost 90,000 net jobs lost? argues the report - This figure is aggravated by the number of unemployed, a figure that rises, comparing the same quarters as for the employed, to an increase of 129,000 unemployed, when also computing the 48,000 people who are looking for their first job or have lost it more than three years ago".
Even so, the predictions for the year 2010 handled by Hispalink imply a relative improvement with respect to the year 2009 and, therefore, the beginning of a new phase of expansion, but still with net decreases. The rate of decrease that is predicted is -0.6%, predicting for the services sector destined for sale a decrease of 1.4%, which implies that net jobs will continue to be lost.
ACN Press