Unemployment Hovers around 25 Percent in Spain
Recording an unemployment record of 24.66 percent in the second quarter, Spain stands at only 0.74 percent from the figure predicted recently by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
An OECD report presents Spain as the most dramatic case of unemployment in the European Union (EU) and warns that by 2013 unemployment rate should reach 25.4 percent.
The National Statistics Institute (INE) confirmed that this is the highest rate since 1976, after the end of the regime of Dictator Francisco Franco.
There are about 5.7 million unemployed, representing an increase of up to 24.63 percent, compared to the 24.44 percent at the end of March, the source said.
Youth are the most affected sector, since, despite the hiring of the tourist season, unemployed people aged between 16 and 24 years accounted for 53.27 percent in June, compared to 52.01 in March, reports said.
Due to the crisis the Spanish family is in a tragic situation because according to the INE the number of households with all members unemployed climbed to 1.7 million, marking an increase of 9,300 homes in the quarter.
U.S. Economic Growth Slows to 1.5 Percent in Second Quarter
The U.S. economy expanded at a slower pace in the second quarter as consumer spending cooled, the Commerce Department reported Friday.
U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), the value of all goods and services, grew at a 1.5 percent annual rate, according to the department’s “advance” estimate, a deceleration from the upwardly revised 2 percent in the first quarter.
The sluggish quarterly growth rate was basically in line with market expectations. The median forecast by economists surveyed showed an estimated pace of 1.4 percent.
The moderating pace of economic growth mainly reflected a deceleration in consumer spending and an acceleration in imports from April through June.
Consumer spending, which accounts for about 70 percent of the U.S. economy, grew 1.5 percent in the second quarter, compared with an increase of 2.4 percent in the first, the department said.
Real exports of goods and services increased 5.3 percent in the second quarter, higher than the rate of 4.4 percent in the first quarter. Real imports rose 6 percent, significantly higher than the 3.1 percent increase in the previous quarter.
Real nonresidential fixed investment increased 5.3 percent in the second quarter, in contrast to a rise of 7.5 percent in the previous quarter.
The change in real private inventories added 0.32 percentage points to the second-quarter change in real GDP after subtracting 0.39 percentage points from the first-quarter GDP change, the department reported.
The U.S. government curbed its spending cuts, which helped soften the blow. Its real consumption expenditures and gross investment decreased 0.4 percent in the second quarter, compared with a decrease of 4.2 percent in the first.
Tension Persists in Tunisia
Tunisian police continued to patrol Sidi Bouzid, the city where the uprising in 2011 started that inspired the Arab revolts, after they violently dispersed a demonstration demanding better salaries and against poverty.
Residents in that town reported that groups of armed demostrators remain deployed in the vicinity of the headquarters of the provincial government yesterday after the building was stoned by hundreds of people unhappy with the official neglect.
The Tunisian police yesterday fired live ammo into the air and tear gas to disperse demonstrators protesting against the leadership of the provincial government of Sidi Bouzid.
Sidi Bouzid was the city where the young fruit vendor Mohammed Bouazizi sacrificed himself in December 2010, and that suicide sparked a protest movement that precipitated the January 14, 2011 downfall of the then President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali.
People who performed community service demanded the authorities of that district to pay two months of wages owed them and as meassure set up barricades with burning tires in the downtown street of Bourghiba Habib.
“Ben Ali’s police are back”, protesters shouted at the violent charge of the anti riot soldiers and referring to the repressive practices of the security apparatus of the former regime.
After Thursday’s clashes a tense calm prevails in Sidi Bouzid, despite verbal altercations between opponents and supporters of Ennahdha, especially after a spokesman of that party considered the attackers a group manipulated by political parties.