Spain unemployment rate shoots to 26%, highest since 1975

MADRID (AFP) - Spain's unemployment rate surged to a modern-day record of 26 per cent in the final quarter of last year, as nearly six million people searched in vain for work in a biting recession.

The jobless rate climbed from a rate of 25.02 per cent the previous quarter, reaching the highest level since Spain returned to democracy after the death in 1975 of General Francisco Franco.

The result shattered even the modest expectations of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's government, which had been forecasting an unemployment rate of 24.6 per cent by the end of last year.

An extra 187,300 people joined the jobless queue, which reached a total of 5.97 million people, a National Statistics Institute report showed. There were 8.33 million households in which every worker was unemployed, it said.