Spain’s jobless numbers rose for the fifth straight month in December to a new 15-year high, official data showed yesterday, posing a stiff challenge to the country’s new conservative government.
The number of registered unemployed rose from the previous month by 1,897 people, or 0.04 per cent, to 4.42 million, its highest level since the labour minister started collecting the figures in 1996.
The number of jobless was up in December from the same year-ago period by 322,286 people, or 7.86 per cent.
“The figures for the number of registered unemployed for the month of December confirm the deterioration of the economic situation during the second half of the year,” the Labour Ministry said in a statement.
Spain, once the motor of job creation in the eurozone, has struggled to find jobs for the millions thrown out of work by the collapse of a labour-intensive property bubble in 2008.
The Bank of Spain warned last week that the economy shrank in the fourth quarter of 2011 as tourism and exports, the drivers of a modest recovery, weakened. The grim report fuelled fears that Spain, the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy, was heading back into recession after the economy posted zero growth in the third quarter of 2011.
The new government of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has vowed to make fighting unemployment and fixing the country’s finances its top priorities.
The economy shrank as tourism and exports weakened
It plans to present a major labour market reform this month which will change hiring laws and the collective bargaining system to try to encourage the hiring of workers.
The Secretary of State for Employment, Engracia Hidalgo, said the successive labour reforms carried out by the previous Socialist government “never made the labour market more dynamic and flexible”.
Spain’s welfare system only allows workers to receive unemployment benefits for a maximum of two years.
But Prime Minister Rajoy’s government on Friday extended a monthly payment of €400 for people whose benefits have run out. The payments had been due to expire in February.
Mr Rajoy was sworn in as Prime Minister on December 22, a month after his Popular Party won a general election in a landslide, putting an end to nearly eight years of Socialist rule.
The National Statistics Institute, which uses a different method of calculation to the Labour Ministry, says the number of unemployed rose to 4.978 million people in the third quarter from 4.834 million in the previous three months.
According to those figures, the Spanish unemployment rate soared to a 15-year high of 21.52 percent in the third quarter, the highest among major industrialised nations.