Unemployment hits new record in March

The number of people out of work in Spain continued to increase last month, hitting a new record high as the economy struggled to achieve sufficient growth to create jobs.

The Labor Ministry said Monday the number of workers officially registered as unemployed rose by 34,406, or 0.8 percent, in March from the previous month to 4.333 million, the highest figure since the current statistical series began in 1996.

"It's always a bad figure when unemployment increases," the secretary of state for employment, Mari Luz Rodríguez, said.

Over 20 percent of the working population in Spain is out of a job, the highest rate in the European Union and double the average in the bloc.

The government expects the economy to be growing at a fast enough clip to create jobs in the second half of this year. However, in a report issued last week, the Bank of Spain forecast the unemployment rate would continue to rise in 2011 and only begin to fall slightly in 2012.

The government is projecting GDP growth this year of 1.3 percent, but the central bank believes this is more likely to come in at 0.8 percent, a figure in line with most experts' calculations. The economy emerged from its worst recession in living memory at the start of last year but shrank on average 0.1 percent for the whole of 2010.

The number of first-time jobseekers registered as unemployed jumped by 67,378, or 20.8 percent, a development the secretary of state for social security, Octavio Granado, attributed to an increase in the working population. The National Statistics Institute (INE) is due to release its Survey of the Active Population (EPA) for the first quarter on April 29.

There was also a surprising jump of 45,660 in the number of people signed on with the Social Security system last month, the first such increase in eight months.

"There are more people working and more people looking for work," Granado said. "The end of the month was better than the beginning and the indicators point to April being a good month and for subsequent months to be positive for average job creation in terms of Social Security registration."

Meanwhile, Rodríguez said that there are over 23,000 long-term jobless no longer entitled to unemployment benefits receiving a new grant of [SIMBOLO_EURO][/SIMBOLO_EURO]400 a month to attend job-retraining courses. Of the total receiving the emergency subsidy, 45 percent are women, with over half aged between 30 and 45 years.