Thursday January 8, 04:25 PM
Spanish jobless hits 12-year high of over three million
By Fabien Zamora
MADRID (AFP) - The number of unemployed workers in Spain soared to a 12-year high point of more than three million in 2008 as the economy reeled from the collapse of the property market and the global financial crisis.
At the end of December, there were 3,128,963 people out of work, up 139,694, or 4.6 percent, over November, the ninth straight monthly increase, the labour ministry said, its highest total since 1996.
Over the past year, the number of job seekers in Spain, a nation of some 46 million people, leapt by almost one million, or 46.9 percent, it added.
The construction industry -- once the engine of the country's economic growth -- was the worst hit, with around 70,701 more unemployed workers in December, up 13.60 percent.
Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero warned the situation would likely get worse before it begins to improve in March as his government's 11-billion-euro (15-billion-dollar) stimulus package starts to bear fruit.
"We will continue to have a tendency of bad figures for the number of registered unemployed in January and February," he told reporters.
During the second half of this year the government aims to recoup all of the jobs which were lost in 2008, he added.
"The is the goal that we have ahead of us. We are mobilizing public spending towards this goal, at a time when private investment is cold, and this should produce the results which we seek," he added.
The labour ministry does not post an unemployment rate, but figures from European Union statistics agency Eurostat issued on Thursday put the Spanish jobless rate at 13.4 percent in November -- the highest level in the 27-nation bloc.
In the euro zone the average unemployment rate was 7.8 percent.
Spain's unemployment rate has risen steadily since it dipped to 7.95 percent in the second quarter of 2007, its lowest level since 1978.
The national statistics institute INE has said it reached 11.3 percent in the third quarter, up from 10.4 percent in the second. It is to release the fourth-quarter figures on January 23.
The government, which has several times revised upwards its rate for 2009, is currently predicting a figure of 12.5 percent this year. But the International Monetary Fund has forecast 14.7 percent.
Spain's once-buoyant economy, the fifth biggest in Europe and which expanded by 3.7 percent last year, has been battered by the impact of the global credit crunch which has crippled its key construction sector that was already weakened by oversupply and rising interest rates.
In the third quarter, the economy shrank by 0.2 percent, the first negative growth since 1993 as the slowdown in the construction sector spread to other sectors.
Experts predict the economy will contract again in the fourth quarter, putting Spain officially in recession which is widely defined as two consecutive quarters of negative growth.
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