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Employment takes slight turn for the better

Registered jobless figure falls in best month-of-April figures for five years; but timing of Easter vacation considered largely reponsible

Spain's ailing job market received some welcome relief last month when the number of registered unemployed fell for the first time this year.

The Labor Ministry said Wednesday that jobless claims declined by 64,309 from March to 4.27 million. That was the best performance for the month of April since 2006, when the economy was still booming.

The figures helped lift some of the gloom cast last Friday by the National Statistics Institute's survey of the working population, which showed unemployment rising to a record 4.91 million in the first quarter as the jobless rate climbed to 21.3 percent.

However, experts attributed the improvement to temporary hiring to cater for the Easter vacation period. Factoring out seasonal variations, the number of people out of work did in fact increase.

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In the first quarter of 2011 Spain's unemployment rate hit a new euro-zone high of 21.3 percent, 100,000 shy of five million people, the highest level since 1997. The government says that while the figure will not worsen significantly, it admits that creating new jobs will take a long time. "In 2011, growth will consolidate and we will create net jobs over the year, but we're a long way from seeing the employment growth that we'd like to see," said Prime Minister Zapatero when the quarterly jobless figures were announced last week.

Spain's collapsed property market and paralyzed construction industry has more than doubled the number of registered unemployed since the start of the economic crisis in 2008. Around 70 percent of the more than two million redundancies since the downturn began have come as a direct result of the burst housing bubble.

According to government figures all major sectors: industry, construction, services and agriculture shed jobs during the first quarter of this year, which means the number of Spanish households in which no adult had a job increased by 58,000, to a new total of 1.38 million.

Earlier this month, Zapatero announced he would not seek a third term. A general election is due by March 2012. For months Zapatero's Socialist Party has trailed in opinion polls behind the main opposition conservative Popular Party. In announcing his decision on April 2 to Socialist Party leaders not to run again, Zapatero admitted: "We have made mistakes."

Local elections in all Spanish towns and cities and for 13 of its 17 regional parliaments will be held on May 22. They are widely seen as a bellwether of voter sentiment for the general elections to follow.

Growing numbers of households are having to survive on unemployment benefit of around 850 euros a month. The jobless who have paid into the Social Security system are only eligible for such payments for a maximum of two years, and many are now no longer eligible.

Outside job centers throughout the country people line up, grimly aware that they have little hope of finding new jobs for years. Many others have either signed off the jobseekers' rolls, or are not even bothering to register in the first place.

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