Spain / Unemployment rate at record 27pc

Spain’s unemployment rate has climbed to a new record of 27.16 per cent in the first quarter of 2013, as a deep recession sparked by the collapse of a property bubble ravages the eurozone’s fourth-largest economy.

The jobless rate jumped from 26.02 per as the number of unemployed climbed by 237,400 people to 6.2 million, Spain’s national statistics institute said.

Spain, once the motor of job creation in the eurozone, is in a double-dip recession, having yet to recover from the collapse in 2008 of a labour-intensive property boom.

The Spanish economy contracted by 1.37 per cent last year, the second worst yearly slump since 1970, and the government forecasts it will shrink again by between 1 and 1.5 per cent this year.

The jobless rate fell to an almost 30-year low of 7.95 per cent in the second quarter of 2007 at the peak of an economic boom that allowed the country to create more than half the new jobs in the eurozone between 2002 and 2005.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor

via Spanish unemployment rate at record 27pc – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation).