The number of people unemployed in Spain, which has the highest jobless rate in the industrialised world, rose in January. This put an end to five months of declines in a row, the labour ministry said today.
There were 4.23 million people registered as jobless last month, up 130,930 or 3.19% from December, with over 80% of the job losses coming from the service sector, it said in a statement.
Compared with the total 12 months ago the figure was up 4.51%, or 182,510.
'This is a bad figure, because every time unemployment goes up this is negative,' said Spain's secretary of state for employment, Mari Luz Rodriguez.
The government does not provide a jobless rate, but the national statistics institute, which uses a different calculation method from the labour ministry, said last week that the rate had surged to 20.33% at the end of 2010.
That rate is the highest in the industrialised world and easily exceeds Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's target of 19.4% for the year.
The Spanish economy, the European Union's fifth biggest, slumped into recession during the second half of 2008 as the global financial meltdown compounded the collapse of a labour-intensive construction boom.
It emerged with tepid growth of just 0.1% in the first quarter of 2010 and 0.2% in the second but then stalled with zero growth in the third.
Zapatero has said the fourth quarter will show positive growth which would pick up steam in 2011 but he warned that job creation would be 'far from what we need and desire. It will be slow and progressive'.
