Madrid, May 5 (IANS/EFE) The ranks of the unemployed in Spain shrank by 64,309 last month to nearly 4.27 million, the labour ministry said Wednesday.

April's decline in joblessness followed three consecutive months of increases.

Unemployment in Spain's public sector grew by 126,935 people over the 12 months ending April 30, while the number of new employment contracts signed last month, 1.07 million, was down 1.06 percent compared with April 2010.

Among immigrants, who now make up around 12 percent of Spain's 47 million residents, the number of unemployed people fell last month by 11,716 to 631,177.

Even so, the total of jobless immigrants was up by 18,258 since April 2010.

Last month's decline in unemployment was the largest for April since 2006, said Spain's secretary of state for employment, Mari Luz Rodriguez.

Registration with Social Security - often used as a proxy measure of employment - climbed in March by 81,447, the second consecutive monthly increase after eight straight months of declines, but remains almost 1 percent below the level of a year ago.

Spain's unemployment rate stands at 21.29 percent, the highest in the 27-member European Union, as the Iberian nation struggles to emerge from the recession and the collapse of a long-building real estate bubble.