Palma/Madrid.Jobless figures to be released next week in Spain will be encouraging and the recession-hit country has started to turn a corner', Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said yesterday.
I'm not counting chickens here, however I recommend that you pay attention to unemployment and social security numbers on Tuesday the 4th ... If the patterns we've seen are confirmed they will be clearly encouraging, Rajoy said at an economic conference.
Spain's unemployment rate currently stands at 27 percent, with more than half of under 25-year-olds out of work.
Economists have forecast joblessness to rise further this year due to a long recession that has depressed consumption and frozen hiring.
Worst behind
Rajoy said Spain had left the worst of its crisis behind and unemployment was slowing.
He added the centre-right government hoped to lower taxes as soon as possible and could cut income tax in 2015. He also repeated a call for Europe to do more to move quickly towards the fiscal and political union needed to calm financial markets and guarantee the future of the euro.
We aren't growing because Europe isn't growing, Rajoy said.
Protests against the troika of international lenders that has bailed out struggling euro zone states - the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the European Union - were mounted in several countries yesterday.
Bad news for Balearics
But, it is not all good news.
Here in the Balearics, the latest figures have revealed that an average of 2'000 jobs have been lost every month in the construction sector since the start of the year as the industry continues to feel the strain of the recession which was sparked by the property bubble bursting, in early 2008 in Spain.
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