Page "Economy of Spain" Paragraph 32

By July 2009, it had shed 1. 2 million jobs in one year.

Spain's unemployment rate hit 17. 4 % at the end of March, with two million people lost their jobs ; with the oversized building and housing related industries contributing greatly to the rising unemployment numbers.

In this same month, Spain had over 4, 000, 000 people unemployed, an especially shocking figure even for a country which had become used to grim unemployment data.

Since 2009 thousands of established immigrants began to leave, although some that did continued to maintain homes in Spain due to poor conditions in their country of origin.