The number of people in Spain registering as jobless marked its sharpest monthly fall on record in April, the Labour Ministry said on Thursday, after the busy Easter holiday prompted a boost in restaurant and hotel hires. Registered joblessness fell by 3.9 percent in April from a month earlier, or by 129,281 people, leaving 3.57 million people out of work, official data showed.
A separate quarterly survey from the National Statistics Institute (INE), which relies on polling rather than those officially registered as holding a job, showed Spain's unemployment rate stood at 18.75 percent in the first quarter. Spain has the second highest unemployment rate in the European Union after Greece after a burst housing bubble ten years ago left millions out of work. An economic turnaround, which began mid-2013, is being driven by domestic consumption as more people find employment, though the rate is not expected to drop below 12 percent until the end of the decade at the earliest.
Most of those signing off the unemployment register were in the services sector, which dropped 96,672 people from a month earlier, while falls were also reported in agriculture, industry and construction. A survey released on Thursday, showed the Spanish service sector expanded at its fastest pace in almost two years in April with employment in the sector also rising at its fastest pace in nine months boosted by hotels and restaurants.
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