PIIGS Unemployment

Update on the recessionary PIIGS of Europe...or are they.  Before the data, consider the Bloomberg story by Angeline Benoit:

Spain’s two-year recession ended in the third quarter, underpinning Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s bet that exports can reboot the euro region’s fourth-largest economy. 

Gross domestic product rose 0.1 percent from the second quarter, when it declined 0.1 percent, the Madrid-based National Statistics Institute said today. That matched the Bank of Spain’s estimate on Oct. 23. Inflation (SPCPEUYY) in October was 0.1 percent, the least since 2009, INE said in a separate release. 

Exports are the only growth driver left to Spain as Rajoy imposes the deepest budget cuts in its democratic history amid a 26 percent jobless rate. Rajoy has pledged to stabilize the government’s debt load by the end of his term in 2015. Spain’s debt ratio has more than doubled since the nation started fighting a recession in 2008. 

“This is an important staging post in what will be a slow but steady recovery,” Timo del Carpio, London-based economist at RBC Capital Markets, wrote in a note today. “The latest data, including more recent survey indicators, suggest the pick-up in growth this quarter is not ephemeral.”

Here are the data for the PIIGS -- Portugal and Ireland have obviously declining unemployment rates.

PIIGS unemployment for the past 10 years.