As for employment, a longtime weakness of the Spanish economy, after having completed large improvements over the second half of the 1990s and during the 2000s, which put a few regions on the brink of full employment, Spain suffered a severe setback from October 2008, when it saw its unemployment rate surging to 1996 levels. During the period October 2007-October 2008 Spain had its unemployment rate climbing 37%, exceeding by far the unemployment surge of past economic crises like 1993. In particular, during the month of October 2008, Spain feared its worst unemployment rise ever recorded and, so far, the country is suffering Europe's biggest unemployment crisis. By July 2009, it had shed 1.2 million jobs in one year and was to have the same number of jobless as France and Italy combined. Spain's unemployment rate hit 17.4% at the end of March, with the jobless total having doubled over the previous 12 months, when 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 for the first time in its history had over 4,000,000 people unemployed, an especially shocking figure even for a country which had become used to grim unemployment data. Although rapidly slowing, immigration continued throughout 2008 despite the escalating unemployment crisis, worsening the situation. In 2009 some established immigrants began to leave, although many that did continued to maintain homes in Spain due to poor conditions in their country of origin.
Some critics say the Spanish labor market is too rigid, preventing employers from removing unproductive employees and putting upward pressure on unemployment as employers are wary of taking risks on new hires.
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