I have lived in spain for 3years and its been almost impossible to find work.
Does anyone know if there is a place to sign on the dole here? I have residence ect…
‘Sign on the dole’ means go on the unemployment in Brit!
As far as I know you have to have paid into social security for 365 days (not necessarily consecutive) before you get any unemployment benefits. At that point it is about 75% of your average previous salary though, so it’s quite a good sum. Once registered you’ll be referred for jobs / courses and if you don’t accept you get a black dot and don’t receive the money any more.
I agree - I never had to sign on in the UK and thought I never would in Spain. However… for all the English teachers out there who are working on a legal contract for 9 or 10 months of the year, it’s an option. I only did it once (thankfully I’m past the temporary contract situation now) and it was time-consuming bureaucratic to do, but it meant that I didn’t have to go the UK and work all summer as well as working all year round. It took 3 visits to the unemployment office, hours of queuing and mountains of forms to fill in, but after that I was free for the summer and received at least a percentage of my salary. Luckily I live in a small town where everyone knows each other so the guy at the unemployment office said - oh you work in such and such school. Are you going back in September? As I was he put the review date for the unemployment benefit down for the beginning of October, by which time I was back at work. This meant I was left alone over the summer and didn’t have to consider taking on any job. I’m not sure other offices would be so accommodating. 😉
