The number of people unemployed in Spain rose by 7.3 percent in October from the figure the previous month, the biggest-ever monthly rise since records have been kept, the labour ministry said Tuesday.
There were 2,818,026 job seekers in Spain in October, an increase of 192,658 people over the previous month and the seventh monthly rise running, it said in a statement.
“The figures are obviously negative and reflect the direct impact of the international financial crisis, which led to a decline in economic activity and as a result an exceptional rise in unemployment,” secretary of state for employment, Maravillas Rojos, said in the statement.
Over the past 12 months the number of jobless in Spain, a nation of about 46 million people, rose by some 770,000 people or 37.5 percent.
Spain was among the fastest-growing European economies during the past decade but growth began to stall last year as the global credit crunch put the squeeze on an already weakened construction sector.
The collapse in the property market helped push the unemployment rate to 11.3 percent in the third quarter, its highest level in over four years and the highest rate in the 27-nation European Union.
The government predicts the unemployment rate will rise to 12.5 percent next year.
The European Commission, the executive arm of the EU, predicts it will hit 13.8 percent in 2009 while the Washington-based International Monetary Fund forecasts the Spanish unemployment rate will rise to 14.7 percent that year.
The unemployment rate had dipped to 7.95 percent in the second quarter of 2007, its lowest level since the fourth quarter of 1978.
The labour ministry does not release the official unemployment rate, which comes from national statistics institute INE. The statistics office only releases quarterly figures for unemployment.
The Spanish economy, the fifth-biggest in Europe, shrank by 0.2 percent in the third quarter from the previous quarter, the first such decline in 15 years, the Bank of Spain said Friday.
