Despite unemployment falling by 65,000 in 2013, jobless rate now above 26% owing to smaller working age population

The International Monetary Fund may have sighted some green shoots of recovery in Spain – but the country's unemployment rate has risen above 26%, according to official figures.

Data published on Thursday by Spain's statistics office show a further 198,900 jobs were lost in 2013. The total number of unemployed is now 5.9 million.

. Although unemployment fell by 65,000 over the course of last year, the percentage has risen because the working age population has fallen by 267,900, through retirement or migration. About 260,000 people left Spain in 2013, around 40,000 of them Spanish nationals, the rest departing foreign migrants.

Migrants have been hard hit by the economic crisis in Spain, with an unemployment rate of 36.6% compared with 24.3% for Spanish nationals. Youth unemployment is down slightly at 55.06%, a fall explained by young people either returning to education or leaving the country.

The Bank of Spain estimates that GDP fell by 1.2% in 2013.

According to the latest figures, agricultural jobs increased by 85,300 while in the service sector they fell by 109,100, with 35,200 lost in construction and 6,000 in manufacturing. Part-time jobs increased by 140,400 and full-time declined by 339,300. The main effect of the government's much touted labour reforms has been an increase in those in part-time work, which now accounts for 16.34% of the total.The World Bank ranks Spain 142nd out of 189 countries for ease of starting a business (six places down on 2013). Spain is also one of the most expensive EU countries in which to be self-employed. About 51,000 people gave up self-employed status in the final quarter of 2013.

Long-term unemployment has led to an increase in the number of people who are no longer entitled to benefits. There are now 686,600 households in which none of their members has an income of any kind.

The area with the highest rate of unemployment is Andalusia (36.3%), followed by the Canaries (33.1%). The lowest is the Basque country (15.7%).

Thursday's figures were met with official silence in Madrid. But in an interview with El País, the European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs, Ollie Rehn, said that in Spain the EU had tried to combine the goal of solvent public finances with economic reforms.

"There were no easy alternatives for Spain nor for anyone. Those that think there was a simple way to recover access to the markets without painful measures are wrong," he told the paper. "It will take 10 years to fix the Spanish crisis."