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.
But if there were manipulation of data the amount of hours wouldn't increase. There is a difference in saying the data is manipulated and saying the data don't tell you the whole story, one questions the data and good faith, the other questions the completeness of the analysis.
Furthermore, the unemployment rate doesn't tell you the whole story because working hours and salaries. The later have not increased meaningfully in the last 20 years... meaning people actually need to work more to have the same life level.