Spain goes wider as unemployment figures continue to rise

Spanish five-year CDS spreads have gone wider this morning, after official figures showed that the country's unemployment levels continued to rise in the fourth quarter. The number of unemployed in the country breached the five million mark in the last months of 2011, increasing from 4.9 million in the third quarter to 5.3 million according to Spain's National Statistics Institute. The unemployment rate is now 22.8%, up from 21.5%.

Spanish five-year CDS has gone six basis points wider to 364bp according to data from Markit, making it the second biggest mover on the SovX index today after Portugal.