MADRID — Official statistics in Spain show that the coronavirus pandemic destroyed 622,600 jobs in 2020, pushing the jobless rate to 16.1% of the working population.

That was a 2.3% increase from the previous year, the highest since 2012, when Spain suffered the worst effects of the financial crisis.

Thursday’s INE figures showed that despite a better-than-expected performance in the last three months of 2020, the year ended with 3.7 million jobless people and 19.3 million employed, including some 600,000 furloughed workers whose salaries are paid by the state while their business remain closed or affected by the pandemic.

Spain's left-wing ruling coalition this week extended the jobs furlough system until the end of May.

Another worrying piece of the data was that the number of households with all members unemployed shot up from 183,900 to nearly 1.2 million in 2020, although over one third are households with one member.