MADRID, June 4 (Xinhua) -- The number of people out of work in Spain fell by 84,085 to 3,079,491 in May, according to data published by the Ministry of Labour, Migrations and Social Security on Tuesday.
That is lowest number of people out of work for May in 10 years, while the number of workers affiliated to the Spanish Social Security rose by 211,752 to 19,442,113, which is the highest number of people working in Spain since July 2007 when 19,493,050 people were affiliated to the social security system.
The last 12 months in Spain have seen unemployment fall by 172,639 -- a reduction of 5.31 percent over the year.
One of the main reasons for the positive employment news is the continued effect of the late Easter holiday period, which saw many companies in the tourism and service sectors delay recruitment until mid-April.
The figures have also benefited from Spain's continued popularity as a tourist destination, with data published by the National Institute of Statistics showing a 4.4 percent rise in the number of foreign tourists visiting Spain in the first four months of the year.
Spain's acting Secretary of State for Labor Yolanda Valdeolivas commented that the figures showed that predictions made by the Bank of Spain that raising the minimum wage in Spain to 900 euros (1,011 U.S. dollars) a month were unfounded.
"The bad omens that we are used to from the Bank of Spain do not correspond to reality and to our disappointment they provoke alarm," she commented.
Javier Diaz-Ginemez, Professor of Economics at the IESA Business School in Madrid, told Xinhua the unemployment figures were "the latest evidence of a late, but very intense, recovery from the recession's brutal job destruction."
"We've seen three years now of extraordinary employment creation. You can pull a fine-tooth comb through the numbers looking for drivers, but after three years, you'll still be seeing an economy broadly growing back," he said.
