MADRID: Spain's unemployment rate fell in 2014 for the second straight year, dropping by just over two points to 23.7 percent, but still remains at one of the highest levels in the European Union, official data showed on Thursday.
The fall was greater than what had been expected by the government, which had forecast the country would end 2014 with a jobless rate of 24.2 percent as en economic recovery gains pace.
Spain technically exited recession in mid-2013 after five years of economic turbulence sparked by the collapse of a property bubble in 2008 which threw millions of people out of work.
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government estimates the economy will have expanded by 1.4 percent in 2014 and will grow by 2.0 percent in 2015, a faster growth rate than is expected in France, Germany and Italy.
It sees Spain's unemployment rate easing to 22.2 percent at the end of 2015.
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