
Economy Minister Elena Salgado at a news conference at the Economy Ministry in Madrid on Friday. / REUTERS
Spain's unemployment rate soared to 17.36 per cent in the year's first quarter, with the ranks of the jobless totalling more than four million, according to figures published Friday.
The workforce survey, released by the National Statistics Institute, showed that the number of unemployed rose by 802,800 between January and March to 4.01 million, the highest since figures started being kept in 1976.
In percentage terms, joblessness is the worst it has been since the fourth quarter of 1998, when unemployment came in at 17.99 percent.
According to the workforce survey, a total of 766,000 positions were eliminated during the first three months of the year. Over the past 12 months, nearly 1.84 million people have joined the ranks of the unemployed and more than 1.31 million positions have been eliminated.
The institute's figures showed that there are now 1.07 million households in Spain in which all of the members are unemployed, more than double the total of a year ago.
Spanish Economy Minister Elena Salgado said Friday that the unemployment figures are worse than what had been expected and a sign of the "seriousness and depth of the crisis."
She expressed confidence, however, that the pace of job losses will begin to slow this month and said the Socialist government of Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez will do everything possible to create jobs and guarantee unemployment benefits.
The unemployment rate also rose sharply among the immigrant population, reaching 28.39 per cent, or a total of 1.06 million jobless foreigners, more than double the number of a year ago.
Over the last decade, hundreds of thousands of migrants - mainly from Latin America, Morocco and Eastern Europe - have relocated to Spain.
Many of them found work in construction, which served as a key engine of the economy for a decade, and services, the two sectors that have seen the biggest job losses.
According to the secretary of state for social security, Octavio Granado, the figures released Friday show that "we're at the epicentre of the crisis."
He added in an interview with the state-owned TVE television network that one of the main reasons for the increase in unemployment has been the increase in layoffs of workers with temporary contracts and the rise in joblessness among women.
The Zapatero administration has launched a 33 billion euro economic stimulus package to blunt the impact of the global recession and taken a number of other measures to deal with the economic meltdown.
Last month, the government said it was implementing tax breaks for companies that hire the unemployed, as well as a new credit line for medium-sized firms, traditionally a key engine of job creation.
On Sunday, Zapatero announced a new measure to stimulate Spain's economy that consists of a series of guarantees for the payment of bills that municipal governments owe to companies and workers employed as independent contractors.