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View All NewsSpain — National labour organisation fails miserably
The Spanish government's national office for labour (INEM) has over the last year only managed to find jobs for 2.1% of job seekers or 350,000 individuals. On the other hand, according to figures from the Association of Large Temporary Employment Agencies (Agett), 2.2 million or 13.9% of job seekers found work via temporary employment agencies during the same period, Libertad reports.
81% of job seekers used the internet as a medium for finding work over the last 12 months with an increase of 25% just in the last three months of 2008. Job boards like Trabajar.com (working.com) and Infoempleo.com (information about employment) are experiencing massive interest from the job seeking population. Trabajar.com has 62.000 corporate subscribers, 25.000 job offers on the web and 3.5 million hits from job seeking candidates over the last year. Other job portals are Laboris.net and Infojobs.net.
The vast majority of Spanish job seekers only use INEM for collecting their unemployment benefits. Most do not believe that there is any point in queuing for hours in order to talk to some civil servant who won't be able to help them anyway.
Under a new initiative called Trabajo (work) the government is proposing to give INEM a new multimedia platform, which will include all job offers INEM has and could also include the job offers from professional staffing agencies. The initiative also proposes to re-structure INEM by employing 1,415 new staff and a further 900 temporary staff this year. On top of this, 1,500 career advisers will be employed in order to help INEM to cope in times of extremely high unemployment.