Jobless queues shrink

FOR the first time in years the number of unemployed looking for work in Spain has fallen in November.

The 14,688 people who left the looking for work register in the month bucks the trend of the last six years when November figures showed an average increase of 64,000.

In fact the numbers leaving the jobs queue were the best figures for the month since records began in 1996.

And over the last 12 months the numbers looking for work have fallen by 296,792 people to 4,512,166.

The registered unemployed figures are not the ones used to calculate the unemployment rate. That is recorded as 5.43 million, or 23.67 per cent, according to the National Statistics Institute’s quarterly figures, still a slight decrease.

The fall is seen as evidence that the benefits of Spain’s tentative economic recovery are starting to filter through to the population at large.

The country came out of recession in mid 2013 and since then has shown five consecutive quarters of growth. In the last 12 months it has expanded by 1.6 per cent. The government has forecast that the economy will grow by 1.3 per cent next year and 2 per cent in 2015.