Spain already has 850,700 households with all their members active in unemployment. That is what the latest official data from the Active Population Survey, analyzed by Demócrata, shows, in a context where the issue has been addressed from multiple points of view and with a generalized consensus: macroeconomic data are not being reflected in employment behavior during the first quarter of the year.
An increase that has been notable in this last quarter, with a rebound of up to 78,500 more households with all their active members unemployed, reaching 850,700. Likewise, those households that had all their active members employed have decreased by 121,300, standing today at 12,045,000.
The data from this EPA confirm that we are facing the worst first-quarter record since 2013. 170,300 jobs were destroyed. Unemployment increased by 231,500 people and the rate rose to 10.83%, placing us at the bottom among our European partners.
Public employment grows, private employment shrinks
José Luis Fernández Santillana, director of the Cabinet of Studies of the Unión Sindical Obrera (USO), explains how the EPAs that are positive for employment are those corresponding to the second and third quarters, while those of the first and fourth tend to provide worse results. “And this EPA from the first quarter of 2026 —argues Fernández Santillana— confirms this trend, in which employment decreases and unemployment rises, despite the activities linked to Holy Week being in this period”.
In these circumstances —USO analyzes—, full-time employment has decreased by 116,500 people and part-time employment by 53,800. For its part, the number of employees fell by 102,900: those with permanent contracts were reduced by 17,600 and those with temporary contracts by 85,400.
On the other hand, this union points out, “the number of self-employed workers decreased by 68,600 people. Private employment fell this quarter by 191,400 people, to 18,630,500, while public employment increased by 21,100, to 3,662,500”.
Growth of permanent-discontinuous workers
In global terms, USO clarifies that the Active Population Survey does not consider fixed-discontinuous inactive workers as active and, therefore, does not count them as unemployed (907,000 at this moment). A segment of potential workers that is currently divided into 310,000 who are looking for work but are not available, and 596,000 who are neither looking for work nor available. "That is to say," concludes Fernández Santillana for this newspaper, "real unemployment would be at this moment at 3.7 million euros."
The deterioration of the labor market at the start of 2026 has found a widely shared diagnosis among public and private organizations. The data from the Active Population Survey published by the National Statistics Institute (INE) reflect a sharp increase in unemployment and job destruction that place this first quarter as the worst since 2013. Beyond the raw data, institutions such as the Bank of Spain have acknowledged the weakness of the period, although they qualify that part of the adjustment responds to seasonal factors and recommend paying attention to seasonally adjusted series to evaluate the underlying trend.
From the fiscal supervision sphere, and as Demócrata has been able to verify, the AIReF has been more explicit in warning - in its real-time GDP growth forecast model, updated downwards this Tuesday by incorporating EPA data, it forecasts an advance of the economy for this quarter of only 0.3%, which represents a slowdown compared to 0.8% in the last quarter of the previous year, thus also anticipating a slowdown in employment. Along similar lines, analysis centers such as Funcas agree in describing the quarter as negative, although they avoid talking about a structural change in the labor market for now. The technical consensus, in any case, indicates that the setback has been more intense than usual for this time of year.
Business and labor organizations have also reacted in the same direction, emphasizing the adverse nature of the data. The employers' association CEOE, for its part, warns of the notable loss of dynamism in job creation during the first quarter of the year, motivated by the insecurity derived from the conflict in Iran and, internally, by the lack of General State Budgets, political uncertainty, and the increase in tax pressure on companies.
Meanwhile, the unions CCOO and UGT, although they insist on the seasonal component, also recognize the deterioration of the quarter. With nuances in interpretation, the common thread is clear: both public and private institutions agree in pointing out that the beginning of 2026 has left the worst labor record for a first quarter in more than a decade.
Last week, the minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, Elma Saiz, avoided focusing on the temporary drop in employment and the increase in unemployment, defending, instead, the solidity of the labor cycle, highlighting high levels of employment and attributing these results to the “Government’s work”. In line with this interpretation, Saiz insists that Spain “is moving forward” and is not taking “a single step back in social protection”, thus reframing negative data that both public and private organizations consider the most adverse for the start of the year in more than a decade.
Latest Eurostat reports on child poverty and electricity bills
Meanwhile, the latest data collected by Eurostat once again place Spain in a delicate social position. The country registers one of the highest child poverty rates in the European Union, with around 28% of minors at risk of poverty or social exclusion. This is a level well above the EU average and consolidates a structural gap that Brussels has repeatedly pointed out in its comparative reports.
The indicator is not cyclical. Eurostat insists that Spain carries a high social vulnerability even in phases of economic growth, with a percentage of households with lower incomes that remains persistently high. The statistical snapshot thus points to a problem of unequal transmission of economic recovery, especially visible in households with children.
In parallel, European energy data reflect a stabilization of wholesale electricity prices in the EU after the peaks of the energy crisis, with average levels around 28–29 euros per 100 kWh. However, Eurostat emphasizes that this moderation is not homogeneously reflected in consumers' final bills, where taxes, tolls, and regulated costs continue to be decisive.
In the Spanish case, that cost structure keeps the electricity bill at relatively high levels within the European environment, even after the wholesale market adjustment. The result is a partial decoupling between the evolution of the energy price at origin and what households finally pay, an element that continues to strain domestic spending despite the normalization of energy markets.
How Le Point sees Spain
These and other macroeconomic data have been the subject of the latest analysis by the French publication Le Point, where its editor, Nicolas Baberez, argues that Spain's economic model has reached a dead end and, in fact, has become an unsustainable system, where growth is financed entirely by public debt —the increase in GDP since 2019 amounts to 330 billion euros, while that of public debt reaches 430 billion—. Public spending —he states— has gone from 41% to 46% of GDP, displacing the private sector, while the growth of activity and the ambitious social agenda have only been possible thanks to aid from the Next Generation EU plan, of which Spain was the second beneficiary after Italy, with 80 billion in grants and 83 billion in loans.
Baberez assures in the editorial titled Pedro Sánchez's Spain, a ticking time bomb, that "this mandate has been exhausted today". Among other reasons, because "GDP per capita has been stagnating since 2019, with 10,680 euros below the euro area average. Productivity is eroding due to weak investment and innovation. The decrease in unemployment has only been achieved through increased precariousness and the exclusion of seasonal workers from statistics. And —concludes this publication specialized in political, economic, and international analysis, with a clear conservative editorial line—, the absolute priority given to renewable energies, especially solar, and grid failures were what caused the Iberian Peninsula blackout on April 28, 2025 and, it highlights, are what endanger the entire European electrical system".
"Real wages"
Also in economic terms and, more specifically, in labor terms, the deputy secretary of Finance, Housing and Infrastructure of the Partido Popular, Juan Bravo, adds that "real wages have fallen; the price of the shopping basket has risen by up to 42% and, the Government has created a fiscal hell by raising taxes more than 100 times, demanding 3,600 euros more in taxes from each Spaniard".
For the popular leader, youth unemployment draws special attention, "with more than 26%, thus having the worst rate in Europe, without forgetting the treatment that our self-employed workers receive", suffocated fiscally, and to whom the Government wants to raise contributions even more," he adds.