Spain's unemployment rate surged past 27 percent to a new record in the first quarter of 2013, official data showed Thursday as a deep recession ravaged the eurozone's fourth-largest economy. A record unemployment number was also expected to emerge later Thursday in France, the eurozone's second-biggest economy. Spain's new figure put its jobless rate just below that of bailed-out Greece -- the highest in the European Union at 27.2 percent.

Spain's unemployment rate soared to a new record of 27.16 percent of the workforce in the first quarter of 2013 as the number of those without jobs surpassed six million, official data showed Thursday. The unemployment rate jumped from 26.02 percent in the previous quarter. The number of unemployed climbed by 237,400 people to 6.2 million, the National Statistics Institute said. ds/wai

MADRID (Reuters) - Spain's unemployment rate rose to a new record of 27.2 percent in the first quarter of this year, with 6.2 million people out of work, data from the National Statistics Institute showed on Thursday. Unemployment stood at 26 percent in the last three months of 2012 while economists' polled by Reuters forecast the number of people out of work in Spain would rise by half a percentage point to 26.5 percent. (Reporting By Paul Day; Editing by Julien Toyer)

Swedish unemployment rose to 8.8 percent in March, an increase of 0.8 percentage points from the same month a year earlier, the national statistics office said Tuesday. Although the seasonally-adjusted jobless rate fell as low as 7.2 percent in September 2011, it has steadily risen since, hitting 8.2 percent in February. Statistics Sweden (SCB) said that unemployment within the industrial sector posted a notable increase in the period, and that the number of jobless people aged between 20-24 has now reached 21.8 percent.