April 28 (Reuters) – Spain’s jobless rate rose to 10.83% in the first quarter, driven by a rise in unemployment in services, but was at its lowest level for the first three months since 2008, data from the National Statistics Institute (INE) showed on Tuesday.
The average estimate of economists polled by Reuters was that the unemployment rate would fall to 9.8%.
Unemployment rose by 231,500 to 2.7 million in a quarter when joblessness in Spain tends to increase due to the seasonal nature of an economy driven by tourism, which tails off after the Christmas period.
The jobless rate was the lowest in a first quarter since the 2008 financial crisis, which hit Spain particularly hard, but remains among the highest in the European Union.
The number of employed people in the first quarter reached a seasonally adjusted all-time high of 22.5 million, an increase of 532,300 from the same period last year.
(Reporting by Tiago Brandao; editing by Charlie Devereux and Kevin Liffey)
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