En Espagne, avec un taux de chômage qui dépasse 25%, la misère économique s’aggrave encore

Infographie : F. Descheemaekere

Unemployment in Spain Exceeds 25%, Taking Economic Misery to New Levels

[The New York Times]

Though hardly a surprise, Friday’s report that Spain’s unemployment rate had surpassed 25 percent was bad news for a government that recently trumpeted a streamlining of its labor market rules.

The ranks of the unemployed swelled to 5.78 million people at the end of the third quarter, compared with 5.69 million a quarter earlier and 2.6 million four years ago, when Spain’s property bubble burst, the report said. The jobs data signaled a deepening recession and raised the likelihood that Spain would again miss budget targets agreed to with other euro zone countries. There was, however, one perversely positive element to the report: the labor picture is so bleak that it could help Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy make the case that Germany and other lenders cannot risk imposing further austerity measures on Spain’s economy in return for providing more European rescue funding. The dire jobs report “gives Rajoy more leverage in his European negotiations and is good ammunition to ask for more time to adapt,” said Federico Steinberg, an economist at the Elcano Royal Institute, a research organization in Madrid.
Mr. Rajoy, however, is also fighting the crisis at home. Unions have called a general strike for Nov. 14, and elections in Catalonia on Nov. 25 could accelerate that region’s drive toward independence.

Lire : nytimes.com