Unemployment soars in Croatia

The national employment agency HZZ said the number of job seekers at the end of October stood at 273,265, a rise of 19.6 percent in a year.

The number of unemployed in Croatia soared by almost 20 percent in the past year, speeding up in the last two months as the global economic crisis bit harder, an official report said Saturday.

The national employment agency HZZ said the number of job seekers at the end of October stood at 273,265, a rise of 19.6 percent in a year.

The unemployment rate, which was 14.7 percent at the end of September, is expected to top 15 percent in updated figures to be published by the national statistics bureau in a week's time.

This would be the highest level for some two years.

Analysts were surprised by the sharp rise of 5.4 percent during October, even following the end of the tourist season, with 14,000 more unemployed signing on.

- Employers were hoping that the recession would not last long and did not lay staff off in the hope of a    recovery - Zdeslav Santic, an economist at Splitska Banka, told Hina news agency.

- But it's clear now that they have run out of finance and have to cut costs and fire employees. -

The Croatian economy shrank by 6.5 percent in the first half of this year and latest figures on consumer spending and industrial output were not encouraging.