WORLD
Spain unemployment: jobless numbers pass 5-million mark
Baku, January 30 (AZERTAC). The number of unemployed people in Spain passed the five-million mark in the fourth quarter of 2011, according to government figures. The country`s National Statistics Institute reported that 5.27- million people were jobless at the end of December, up from 4.9 million in the prior quarter. That translated into an unemployment rate of 22.8 percent, the highest such level in almost seventeen years. Spanish unemployment, the highest in the Euro zone, is almost at a rate almost double the average of the 17-nation currency bloc (which was at 10.3 percent in November). Joblessness has particularly struck Spanish youth - nearly half (48.6 percent) of people between the ages of 16 and 24 are now without work. If the unemployment picture was as bad in the United States as it is in Spain, then there would be roughly 34-million Americans out of work. The horrid economy swept the Socialists from power late last year, giving the conservative Popular Party a resounding victory and a mandate to fix the jobless problem. However, the new Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has warned the country will have to take some bitter medicine - including budget cuts, labor reforms and higher taxes. As in Greece and other battered Euro zone economies, unions have vowed to stage national strikes against the government`s austerity measures.
Meanwhile, the Spanish economy is expected to slide into recession this year - the Bank of Spain predicts GDP will contract by 1.5 percent in 2012, making Rajoy`s pledge to reduce the budget deficit to 4.4 percent of GDP a seemingly impossible task.