Spain says its jobless rate rose nearly half a percentage point in the second quarter to 20.09 percent, its highest level since 1997.
Though the rate increased from 20.05 percent in the first three months of the year, the National Statistics Institute said the number of people working actually increased.
However, the overall unemployment rate still rose because of a large increase in the work force.
Spain barely crawled out of technical recession in the first quarter of this year after nearly two years of economic contraction.
Spain will probably lose its Aaa credit rating after the country was put under review for possible downgrade last month, Moody’s Investors Service said.
“Spain is very highly rated and I can’t say where that rating will end up, but it’s likely to go down a bit,” Steven Hess, senior credit officer at Moody’s, said in an interview in Sydney on Thursday.
The Spanish government is trying to cut the third-largest budget deficit in the eurozone while returning to growth after experiencing almost two years of recession.
Spain’s classification may be lowered as much as two grades, Moody’s analysts said on June 30, citing “deteriorating” economic prospects and the challenges the government faces to achieve its fiscal targets.
“We’re watching the government’s measures that they are implementing and we’ll probably try to put that rating at the level we think it should belong for some time to come,” Hess said.
“We don’t see it moving down as many notches as Greece did,” he added.
Moody’s last month downgraded Greece four steps to non-investment grade, citing “substantial” risks to economic growth from the austerity measures tied to a 110 billion euro (US$144 billion) aid package from the EU and the IMF.
The company’s review of Spain will be concluded within a three-month period, it said last month.
Standard & Poor’s cut Spain’s rating in April and Fitch followed with a downgrade in May.
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