Emergency Unemployment Benefit Extended for Another 6 months
October 28th, 2010
The government in Spain said yesterday that it will extend by another six months a payment of 420 euros a month to jobless workers who have lost their rights to benefits.
It was the third extension to the measure, which was introduced in August 2009.
The benefit will now be available until August 2011, Labor Minister Valeriano Gomez announced at his first news conference since taking office last week.
The country’s unemployment rate was 20.09 percent in the second quarter, the highest in the 16-nation eurozone. That was up from 20.05 percent in the first quarter and its highest level in 13 years.
The National Statistics Institute is to announce third-quarter figure on Friday.
Last month the government raised its forecast for the unemployment rate for next year to 19.3 percent of the work force from a previous estimate of 18.9 percent.
The Spanish economy, Europe’s fifth-largest, went into recession in 2008 due to a collapse of a decade-long Spanish property boom.
It recovered this year with growth of 0.1 percent in the first quarter and 0.2 percent in the second. The Socialist government has also introduced tough spending cuts in a bid to slash its massive public deficit.
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