Spain's unemployment rate fell to 11.60%, a 15-year low, down from 13.26% three months earlier, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed on Thursday.
Stats are manipulated. 3 years ago the government changed the name of the temporary job contracts to "discontinuous permanent worker". They are hired by a company but they only work few days or even few months a year. People with that kind of contract does not count as unemployed, even if they only work few days a year.
Most of the workers with that kind of contract want to work a full time job but they can't due to the high unemployment. The same as before but now the stats looks better.
If I am understanding it correctly it is still not good because this generally means companies outsource their workforce and hire "freelancers" to avoid paying the same benefits as if they were regular workers.
Stats are not perfect but they are not manipulated. People working less hours are still workers. Global working hours have also increased. Minijobs in Germany are similar.
Real unemployment (calculated with the total number of hours worked, number of temporary workers... etc) is between 19% and 23%. It has been like this since 2008 crisis. The unemployment among youth people is 45%.
There a many reasons, not just one. Imho it's related to the tourism (summer season), we have few industry (full time jobs all year), unemployment benefits are very generous (there are some jobs in agriculture that are done just by inmigrants from moroco with temporary visa, the landlords don't find Spanish people to work)