SPAIN'S UNEMPLOYMENT RATE RISES TO A NEW RECORD

Madrid, 15 Jumadil Akhir 1434/25 April 2013 (MINA) – The National Statistics Institute showed on Thursday (25/4), Spain’s unemployment rate rose to a new record of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, with 6.2 million people out of work, Fox Business report.

Unemployment stood at 26 percent in the last three months of 2012 while economists’ polled by Reuters forecast the number of people out of work in Spain would rise by half a percentage point to 26.5 percent.

Prime Mariano Rajoy said, Wednesday (24/4) in parliament, that Spain’s jobless rate continued to rise in the first quarter but at a slower rate than in previous years, according to Fars News Agency report monitored by Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).

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The job situation for the entire year “will not be good, but it will be less bad than in the preceding years”, he added during a debate in parliament on Wednesday, Aljazeera reported.

“Next year we will have growth and jobs will be created in our country,” he said.

Spain’s unemployment rate hit 26.02 percent in the fourth quarter of 2012, a record high since the re-birth of Spanish democracy after the death of dictator General Francisco Franco in 1975 and the second-highest level in the eurozone after Greece.

Spain is in a double dip recession, having never recovered from the collapse of a decade-long property boom in 2008.

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The Spanish economy, the eurozone’s fourth-largest, contracted by 1.37 percent last year, the second worst yearly slump since 1970, and the government forecasts it will shrink again by between 1.0 percent and 1.5 percent this year. (T/P09/E1)

Mi’raj News Agency (MINA).