According to a survey released by the National Statistics Institute, a total of 4.57 million people were unemployed between July and September and the jobless rate was 19.79 percent.
The number of employed people, meanwhile, climbed to 18.55 million. According to the survey, the number of households in which all members are without work fell by 15,900, to 1.29 million.
However, compared with the third quarter of 2009, the number of completely jobless households was up by 13.71 percent. The collapse of the real-estate sector contributed to this unemployment rate that remains the highest in Europe, with the immigrant population especially hit hard by the country's economic woes.