Spain: an unemployment rate that borders on disaster

Things only get worse in Spain. While the country already holds the - sad - European record in the unemployment rate the highest, the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said Saturday that the number of unemployed in Spain rose late 2011 to 5.4 million.

Alarming information which would mean if an increase in unemployment but also accelerated its progress. If the estimates prove to be verified government, more than 400,000 additional unemployed should be so recognized from the end of September, during which Spain already showed a rate of 21.52%, the highest value in the industrialized world.

 "Reducing unemployment is our challenge, our efforts and all our policies will be dedicated to this goal," also held Rajoy said at a meeting of his party, the Popular Party.

In any event, the unemployment figures for the fourth quarter 2011 to be published on January 27 by the National Institute of Statistics (INE).

In late September, the number of unemployed in Spain rose to 4.978 million, against 4.83 million in late June (20.89%). Remember that Friday, the rating agency Standard and Poor's lowered two notches, to A, the note of the sovereign debt of Spain, while accompanying a negative outlook.

Standard and Poor's has already suggested that the rating could be lowered again in 2012 or 2013, and this especially in the absence of reform of the labor market. In late November, the conservative Mariano Rajoy, asked the two major unions and employers to agree "emergency" before the second week of January 2012 on measures to curb unemployment in the country.

This reform should concern, "among others, collective bargaining, the extra-judicial resolution, the terms of contracts, absenteeism, temporary employment and training." "We have entered the ground floor with structural reforms that we think need to be conducted," but noted the president of the employers' organization CEOE, Juan Rosell.

"It's the economy that generates employment and non-labor laws," had then for his part stressed the Secretary General of CCOO, Ignacio Fernandez Toxo. Mariano Rajoy would have ensured prefer "an agreement" with the unions, rather than "impose" a labor reform.

But "if there is no agreement, the government is there to decide and do what he considers appropriate," said Juan Rosell was, however, considering it "a situation emergency of extreme necessity "and that the country's future was at stake

Note that if a reform was first conducted in 2010, notably in order to reduce the duality between fixed and precarious contracts, many economists are urging the Spanish Government to set up a new reform to enhance flexibility in the labor market.