While much of Europe and North America is starting to post decent figures for employment improvement over the last few weeks and months, one western nation is still struggling with its employment levels.

In Spain, latest figures released by the National Statistics Institute (INE) show that unemployment has continued to creep up in the country, reaching 22.9 per cent and leaving over five million people out of work.

This means that there have been calls for the Spanish government to seriously concentrate on raising performance in the jobs sector.

The bad news comes in the sameweek as other European countries such as Sweden post promising figures, with the number of Swedish jobs jumping by 68,000 in December compared to the year before.

Estefania Ponte, chief economist at Cortal Consors said: "This shows that the government has to carry out a labor reform that focuses on incentivizing hiring, rather than just on cutting firing costs."

Posted by Alex Donnell