Spain’s jobless numbers shot to a new record high in February, according to new government figures, as people struggled in vain to find work in the recession-bound economy.

Economy still reeling from the 2008 housing bubble collapse, which destroyed millions of jobs

The number of job seekers surged 2.44 per cent from the previous month to 4.71 million people, said the Labour Ministry report, which is based on the official unemployment register.

“These unemployment figures justify the Spanish government’s approval of a complete and balanced labour reform in a very difficult period for the Spanish and European economy,” the State Secretary for Labour, Engracia Hidalgo, said in a statement.

Under the labour market reform approved by Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government on February 11, maximum severance pay is slashed to 33 days’ salary for each year worked from 45 days, going back 24 years at most.

It also makes it easier for companies to opt out of sector-wide or country-wide union collective wage agreements.

The government has made the labour market reform, along with steep spending cuts and a plan to clean up the country’s banks, a cornerstone of its efforts to revive the economy.

The Spanish economy, the eurozone’s fourth largest, shrank by 0.3 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2011 and the government has warned that the drop will likely be steeper in the first quarter of this year.

The Bank of Spain has forecast the economy will shrink by 1.5 per cent in 2012.

The economy is still reeling from the 2008 housing bubble collapse, which destroyed millions of property-related jobs. But the latest figures showed that agricultural workers were the hardest hit in February, with unemployment in the sector up more than seven percent from the previous month.

Figures released in January by the National Statistics Institute, which uses a different calculation method, showed a jobless queue of 5.27 million and an unemployment rate of 22.85 per cent at the end of 2011.