MADRID: The jobless rate rose to 23.78 percent, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE), up from 23.7 percent in the previous quarter.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has repeatedly said creating jobs is his top priority after pushing through labour market reforms, reducing a budget gap and rescuing the country’s teetering banks. The number of people out of work in the January to March period actually fell by 13,100 to 5.44 million when compared with the previous quarter, the biggest drop in unemployment in a first quarter since 2005, it said in a statement.
But the unemployment rate still rose because the size of the workforce shrank during the first quarter by 127,400 people to 22.9 million as the length of Spain’s economic downturn prompted many long-term unemployed to give up looking for work or leave the country. “The numbers have never been so clear: the long-term unemployed are stopping looking for work,” said Maria Angels Valls, a professor of management at Spain’s ESADE business school.
