Fifty thousand will be out of work this summer

PALMA
THE General Workers' Union warned yesterday that unemployment figures in the Balearics will not fall below 50'000 this summer.
The Union warned that the delay in the start of the season will have a negative effect on employment levels with less contracts being offered over the coming months.

Secretary of the UGT, Manuel Pelarda, forecast that there will be about 50'000 people still out of work at the peak of the summer holiday season.
Whilst there were 75'000 registered without work at the end of March, 25'000 are expected to find work in the tourist industry this season.
Each year, between 25'000 and 30'000 people find seasonal work but, these figures obviously vary in line with holiday sales and hotel bookings. “Based on employment data from previous years,” said Pelarda, “the number of jobless is going to fall over the next few months, but only because of seasonal tourism. “In any event, the fall in unemployment is going to be much less than in previous years.” Pelarda forecast that by the end of this month, unemployment should have shrunk to around the 65'000 mark - far higher than the 41'000 registered at the same time last year.

In May this year, he added, figures should bottom out at around 50'000 in comparison with the 36'439 registered in 2008.
Pelarda also stressed that many tourist establishments are opening a month later than normal this year which, he said, mean that people who are contracted to work only during the season will have had a job the minimum amount of time necessary for them to be able to claim unemployment benefit in the winter.

Speaking on the fall in the number of contracts handed out at the beginning of the tourist season, Antonio Copete, secretary general for the Union's Commerce and Hostelry section said that the outset of the tourist season is witnessing ten percent less people getting jobs in the hotel industry due to fewer establishments opening.

In April 2008, said Copete, unemployment fell in the Balearics by 1'818. He added that although it is still too soon to say what the figures will be for this April, expectations are that not as many people will have found jobs in the hostelry sector. Tourism in the Islands employs roughly 65 percent of the total workforce and the industry expressed concerns earlier in the year that the global credit crunch would impact negatively on holiday bookings.