- Luis de Guindos, Economy Minister
Spain's unemployment increased to 22.8 per cent in the last three months of 2011 from 21.5 per cent the previous quarter and surpassed five million mark, said the National Statistics Institute on Friday.
Unemployment "is the main source of vulnerability of the Spanish economy and this is something that we hope to start to fix in the short term," said Economy Minister Luis de Guindos on Friday during the economic forum in Davos.
"We have to take a lot of decisions because there are some things that don't work properly in the labor market in Spain."
"In this environment it's questionable whether massively increasing austerity measures is the right thing to do," said Ben May, a European economist at Capital Economics in London.
"The key thing for the southern European economies, the only way you're going to see growth, is if they aren't forced to tighten fiscal policy significantly."
© Dukascopy Bank