Spain Unemployment Rises to 24.4%

EMU officials in Brussels want to see specific details on how Spain will reduce its budget deficit to 3% of GDP in 2013. Given the 2011 deficit was 8.5%, EMU officials do not believe Spain, nor should anyone else. The targets will not be met. Moreover, some in Brussels accuse Spain of artificially inflating the 2011 deficit so as to better meet its interim target. Those are contradictory accusations actually. If the deficit is artificially inflated, it should be easier to make the targets.

Inquiring minds are investigating miserable unemployment stats in Euroope as reported this morning by Eurostast. The euro area (EA17) seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 11.8% in November 2012, up from 11.7% in October. The EU27 unemployment rate was 10.7% in November 2012, stable compared with October. In both zones, rates have risen markedly compared with November 2011, when they were 10.6% and 10.0% respectively.

Inquiring minds keep poking around at problems in Spain and everywhere one looks problems are far greater than government officials would like you to believe.

At 27.2%, Spain is suffering the worst unemployment rate in modern history. Spain is tied with Greece, and is worse than the approximately 25% unemployment rate that the US saw during The Great Depression.

The Spanish economy is deteriorating rapidly, and a general strike will not help matter any. Nonetheless, strikes, and I am willing to bet increasing violence, will soon befall Spain. Please consider Spain’s new government faces first strike Spain’s two largest unions, Comisiones Obreras and UGT, voted on Friday to call for a general strike on March 29 against reforms they called “the most regressive in the history of Spanish democracy”.