(Bloomberg) -- The number of Spaniards registered as without a job fell to the lowest level since 2009 in June, bolstering Acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's pledges on job creation.
The number of unemployment-benefits claimants fell by 124,349 from May to 3.77 million, the Spanish Labor Ministry said in an e-mailed statement Monday. That was the biggest monthly decline in three years and exceeded the median estimate of three economists surveyed by Bloomberg who had forecast a drop of 100,000.
Rajoy's People's Party won last month's general election promising to add half a million jobs a year over the four-year parliament and arguing that the premier was the best candidate to safeguard the economic recovery. Rajoy, whose failure to stem corruption allegations against the PP has blighted his relations with other political leaders, on Monday repeated his call for other parties to allow him to form a government so that he can continue his work creating jobs.
“If there is a stable administration that can govern, we will create confidence and with the help of the entrepreneurs for whom it's very important to provide this confidence, we will achieve the great national objective of creating 2 million jobs,” Rajoy said in a speech at a brewery in Alovera, Spain, Monday. He said Spain needed a government to be able to pass a new budget and push forward with policies that have broad political backing.
--With assistance from Ainhoa Goyeneche and Harumi Ichikura To contact the reporter on this story: Charles Penty in Madrid at cpenty@bloomberg.net. To contact the editors responsible for this story: Vidya Root at vroot@bloomberg.net, Ben Sills, Zoe Schneeweiss
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