The number of registered job seekers in Spain rose for the eighth straight month in March to a new record high, government figures showed yesterday, as the country slides back towards recession.
The number of workers officially registered as unemployed climbed by 0.82 per cent from the previous month to reach 4.75 million, the highest figure since the current statistical series began in 1996, the labour ministry said.
The number of unemployed was up by 9.63 per cent from March 2011.
The Spanish economy, the eurozone’s fourth largest, is still reeling from the collapse of a labour-intensive property bubble in 2008 which destroyed millions of jobs.
Spain’s economy is expected to contract 1.7 per cent this year, after posting a modest expansion of 0.7 per cent in 2011, according to the government’s estimates.
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.
The government expects the unemployment rate – already the highest in the industrialised world – to surge to 24.3 per cent this year.
The rise in unemployment makes it harder for the government to meet its goal of bringing the public deficit down to 5.3 per cent of output this year and to within a EU-limit of three per cent next year as it causes spending on jobless benefits to rise.
Spain last week unveiled its most stringent budget since the country returned to democracy following the death of dictator Francisco Franco in 1975 which includes €27 billion worth of spending cuts and tax hikes. The 2012 budget freezes public sector wages, raises taxes on tobacco and closes tax loopholes and rebates for large companies but spared jobless benefits and pensions amid rising public anger at the dire economic situation. Spain is racing to reduce its public deficit to reassure markets that it will not follow Greece, Ireland and Portugal in requesting an international bailout.
To fight unemployment Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s centre-right government passed a new labour reform in February which makes it cheaper and easier for companies to lay people off and cut wages unilaterally.
The government argues the reform – which has been hotly contested by unions – will spur job creation in the long term when the economy rebounds even as it predicts the unemployment rate will rise in the short term.
“We continue to face an unsatisfactory situation of an increase in the number of people registered as unemployed,” Secretary of State for Employment, Engracia Hidalgo said in a statement.
“This is why it is necessary to reiterate the importance of creating confidence and flexibility for companies, as was done with the labour law reform,” she added.
Unions argue the reform eliminates hard-won rights and will only increase unemployment.
They staged a general strike on Thursday against the measure which was marred by clashes in Barcelona where youths set fire to garbage bins and a Starbucks coffee shop.