Spanish official unemployment shrinks in June

Spain's jobless queue shrank in June for the third month running, the government said on Monday. The number of unemployed slipped by 1.62 percent from the previous month to 4.12 million people in June, the Labour Ministry said, as jobless numbers dropped in services, construction and industry. It was the third monthly decline in a row since the number of unemployed peaked at 4.33 million people in March, the highest since current records began in 1996. Spain's jobless rate hit 21.29 percent in the first quarter of the year, the highest in the industrialized world, according to a separate report released earlier by the National Stastics Institute. Unemployment boomed in Spain after the collapse of the property bubble in 2008.