Spain’s jobless rate soared to a record 24.4 per cent in a deepening recession in the first quarter, data showed last Friday.
A total 5.64 million people searched in vain for work in the deficit-plagued Spanish economy, the fourth-biggest in the troubled eurozone, the National Statistic Institute said.
Spain already had the highest level of unemployment in the industrialised world as the slumping economy failed to absorb the millions of workers who have lost their jobs since a massive property bubble imploded in 2008.
The slump has been compounded by stiff government austerity measures to rein in the public deficit and curb mushrooming debt, making jobs even harder to find.
The unemployment rate hit 24.44 per cent in the first quarter, up sharply from 22.85 percent in the last three months of 2011, the National Statistics Institute report showed.
Some 365,900 jobs were lost in the quarter, pushing the unemployment rate to its highest level since records began in their existing format in 1996, it said.