Spain has seen a drastic drop in its employment rate in the first quarter, which makes it the second largest EU nation in terms of job losses, official figures showed on Monday.

Its employment decreased 3.1 percent in relation to the same period in 2008 and 6.4 percent on inter-annual terms, said the EU statistics agency Eurostat.

According to figures released by the Spanish National Institute of Statistic (INE), the country's unemployment rate in the first quarter was 17.3 percent, which means more than 4 million people were out of work.

It was only surpassed by Lithuania, whose employment fell 4.5 percent compared with the corresponding period last year.

The number of people hired in the EU dropped by 0.8 percent in the first quarter compared with the previous quarter, the sharpest drop since 1995 when record started, said Eurostat. It means that 1.2 million jobs were lost, the agency added.

Eurostat said that around 223.8 million people were hired in the EU in the first three month of this year, 146 million of them in the euro zone.

Source:Xinhua