It was patently obvious to anyone in Spain who had a brain (and that obviously excludes Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy), that the Popular Party’s new labor reforms were going to make even more people unemployed.
New figures are out today, and since the new labor reforms went into effect, Spanish unemployment has increased by 6.9 percent to a two decade high, with more than 24% of Spaniards now on the unemployment line. Why Mariano Rajoy couldn’t see this is what would happen with his harsh labor reforms, when the rest of us could, is hard to understand.
After all, when you make it cheaper and easier for companies to fire people, guess what, that’s what they do. That is evidenced by the record number of Spaniards now without jobs, many of whom have been laid since Rajoy’s new labor reforms took effect.
Rajoy, predictably, says he will continue with his austerity measures even though everything now points to them making an already bad situation much worse. After all, he doesn’t want to admit he doesn’t have a clue, and is far worse than his predecessor ever was.
Meanwhile, more than five and a half million Spaniards are now unemployed, with more joining the unemployment ranks every day. The government also expects the economy to contract by a further 1.7 percent by the end of the year, which will cause even more people to lose their jobs.
All the Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz Santamaría could say was the Popular Party government would “work even harder” to create jobs. Yep. That’s going to help.