MADRID: The number of registered job seekers in Spain hit a new record high in March, government figures showed Tuesday, as the country slides back towards recession.
The number of job seekers rose 0.82 percent from the previous month to 4.75 million people, its eighth monthly increase, according to a labour ministry report which is based on the official unemployment register.
The Spanish economy, the eurozone's fourth largest, is still reeling from the collapse of a labour-intensive property bubble in 2008 which destroyed millions of jobs.
Figures released in January by the National Statistics Institute, which uses a different calculation method, showed a jobless queue of 5.27 million and an unemployment rate of 22.85 percent at the end of 2011.
The government expects the unemployment rate -- already the highest in the industrialised world -- to surge to 24.3 percent this year.
Spain is expected to contract 1.7 percent this year, after posting a modest expansion of 0.7 percent in 2011, according to the government's estimates.
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