Spain's jobless rate has exceeded 20% for the first time in more than 10 years, the government said today.

It was more dismal news for a recession-plagued economy that is being dragged into Europe's debt crisis.

The National Statistics Institute said the rate rose 1.22% points in the first quarter to 20.05%.

While other major economies in Europe and elsewhere have posted at least tepid growth as they fight to crawl out of recession, the eurozone's fourth-largest economy is still contracting after the collapse of a construction boom that had fuelled years of expansion.

The agency said that as of the end of March, there were 4,612,700 people out of work in the country. The jobless rate is the highest since the last quarter of 1997, when it stood at 20.11%. Since Spain slipped into recession in 2008, the rate has roughly doubled, a dramatic development for a country that had been one of Europe's top job-creators.

Now, with the recession forcing the government to spend heavily on joblessness benefits and stimulus measures, the deficit is soaring, triggering worries among investors that Spain might be in danger of a debt crisis like the one that has engulfed Greece. Ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded Spanish debt this week.

Finance Minister Elena Salgado called the figure released today "very high." She noted, however, that fewer jobs are being destroyed than last year - about 290,000 in the quarter that just ended, compared to a stunning 800,000 in the first quarter of 2009.

"A much lower number of jobs has been lost, but that does not mask the gravity of these figures or the government's determination to do what is necessary to create jobs," she said.

Spain, once among Europe's largest creators of jobs and boasting more than a decade of solid GDP growth, is now suffering its worst recession in decades. It has been in recession since the third quarter of 2008 after the collapse of a boom fuelled by residential construction and credit-fuelled consumer spending. The building sector and related industries had accounted for nearly 20% of the country's economic output.

Immigrant workers provided a lot of that manpower. The jobless rate among foreigners living in Spain is now almost 31%.

Last year the economy contracted 3.6%. The government's official forecast is that the economy will post at least modest growth in the first quarter compared to the last three months of 2009, and contract 0.3% on the year, then grow 1.8% in 2011.

But the country's central bank has predicted a drop of 0.4% this year and expansion of just 0.8% next year, and the European Commission has also said the government's numbers are optimistic.

Standard & Poor's cited weak prospects for growth in the Spanish economy when it downgraded Spanish debt from AA+ to AA this week. Last year the government ran a deficit equivalent to 11.2% of GDP.

Today's unemployment figure was actually released by mistake on Tuesday, when the statistics agency posted it online in error, then declined to confirm it as official.