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111,916 people leave Spain's jobless queues

The Local Spain
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111,916 people leave Spain's jobless queues
File photo: Gerard Julien/AFP

Spain saw its jobless numbers drop by over 111,000 in May, the largest fall for the month on record, official figures released on Tuesday show.

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The number of people without work in Spain fell to 4,572,385 in May, according to employment ministry figures released on Tuesday. That was the biggest drop in May on record.

When those figures are seasonally adjusted, May's fall was 24,604.

Unemployment was also down 318,543 on May 2013.

In May, 198,320 people signed onto Spain's social security system, the best monthly figure since 2005, and a bump of 1.21 percent on April's figures.

Spain's overall unemployment rate actually rose to 25.93 percent in the first quarter of 2014 from 25.73 percent in the previous three months, according to a broader, household survey released last month.

Many people departed the workforce by retiring, leaving the country in search of work elsewhere or simply giving up the job hunt, the figures showed.

Spain's economy emerged in mid-2013 from five years of stop-start recession, showing a gradual but modest increase in activity since then.

Unemployment remains a daunting challenge for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's conservative government, however, six years after a decade-long property bubble imploded in 2008, wiping out millions of jobs and sparking a double-dip recession.

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