Spain’s unemployed population grows

The Spanish Labor Ministry has announced that the country’s jobless queue increased to 4.63 million people in August.

According to a statement released by the Spanish Labor Ministry on Tuesday, for the first time in five months, the number of registered Spanish people looking for a job rose by 38,179 in August, up 0.8 per cent from the 4,625,634 recorded in July.

“Although it’s true that an increase in unemployment is bad news it should be stressed that it is the weakest increase for August, traditionally a bad month for employment, since 2006,” AFP quoted Spanish Labor Minister Engracia Hidalgo as saying.

Earlier in the last month, the government decided to extend the life of a 400-euro ($500) monthly payment for unemployed people.

Meanwhile, the Spanish government is pushing ahead with its austerity measures in an effort to reduce its debt and save its ailing banking system.

The latest figures from the Luxemburg-based European Union (EU)’s statistics office, Eurostat, revealed Friday that Spain suffered the highest rate of unemployment in the single currency area in July with one out of four Spaniards without a job.

Battered by the global financial downturn, the Spanish economy collapsed into recession in the second half of 2008, taking with it millions of jobs.

The worsening debt crisis has forced the EU governments to adopt harsh austerity measures and tough economic reforms, which have triggered incidents of social unrest and massive protests in many European countries.