Spain: less than two in ten jobseekers receive training courses

Out of the 628,800 jobseekers who currently attend training, 200,000 – i.e. less than a third – currently attend qualifying training (vocational or academic training) and the remaining 400,000 attend training programs provided by public employment services. However, according to the Agett, most of those who attend these programs are young people who haven’t had their first job yet or people who hadn’t integrated the labor market when the crisis began. The study shows that the higher the unemployment rate, the lower the percentage of jobseekers attending training. In 2007, when unemployment amounted to 7.9%, 22% of jobseekers attended training. According to the authors of the survey, this can be explained by the way employment budgets are divided, between passive policies (benefits, compensation…) and active policies (training and job incentives). Currently, only 50% of the funds invested are dedicated to active policies and recruitment incentives, against the government’s ambition to change the economic model and turn the country’s activity toward innovative sectors. Experts point out that, to allow the Spanish economic driving force to renew, which used to be based on construction and low-skilled services, the priority should be to train and recycle workers from these sectors, badly hit by the current crisis.