April 25, 2009
Spain's unemployment rate leaps to record high

More than four million Spanish people are out of work. According to the country's
National Statistics Institute a record high figure of 17.4 per cent were unemployed
in the first quarter of the year.

Unemployment leapt from 13.9 per cent in the fourth quarter of 2008, the biggest
quarterly jump since 1976. Joblessness in Spain has almost doubled in a year.

The Bank of Spain had previously forecast that unemployment would not surpass 17.1
per cent for the year. Alarmingly, 1,068,400 families have every member out of work.

And as the dole queues lengthen, labour unrest is growing. Two hundred pickets
yesterday picketed a shipyard in the Basque country to protest at the employment
of cheap Romanian and Portuguese workers that is threatening the jobs of 1,100
local workers.


http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle6164629.ece