Spanish Jobless Claims Rise as Economy Heads for Contraction

[alp227]

Source: Bloomberg/Business Week

Registered unemployment in Spain, where almost half of young people are out of work, rose for the fourth month in November as the euro area’s fourth-largest economy showed signs of contraction.

The number of people registering for unemployment benefits climbed by 59,536 to 4.42 million people, the Labor Ministry in Madrid said in an e-mailed statement today. In October, the number surged by 134,182, the most since February 2009.

Spain’s economy stagnated in the third quarter as borrowing costs surged. Preliminary data indicate a further weakening in the final three months of the year, the Bank of Spain said Nov. 30, citing Europe’s worsening debt crisis. Prime Minister-elect Mariano Rajoy, due to take over from the ruling Socialists Dec. 21, has pledged to cut the euro area’s third-largest deficit while consolidating a fragile recovery from a three-year slump.

Unemployment has more than doubled since the collapse of Spain’s debt-fueled building boom, reaching 22.8 percent in October, according to the EU’s statistics office. Joblessness nears 49 percent among people under 25, the highest since the series began in 1983.

Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-12-02/spanish-jobless-claims-rise-as-economy-heads-for-contraction.html

[Javaman]

1. Here comes the first effects of the "brilliant" austerity program...

anyone taking bets on riots starting soon?

you squeeze the people of their money, then you shit on them and give them nothing.

great plan.

the threads are coming loose.

[xchrom]

2. Recommend

[DallasNE]

3. The New PM Can "Pledge" All He Wants

But the reality is that its not going to happen. There is no way he can cut the deficit in a contracting economy -- actually an economy that is already in depression with such high (and sure to grow) unemployment figures.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Which goes to demonstrate

that they'd have been better off without the building boom and really nothing else.

With an industry funded by the USA's sub prime mortgage fiasco what was supposed to provide funding in its absense.