Unemployment in Spain fell by 310,400 between the months of April and June to a total of 5,622,900, official figures indicated on Thursday.

It was reported by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics (INE), which published its quarterly Inquest into the Active Population (EPA).

The EPA, which uses a different calculation method to the Ministry of Employment, says 24.47 percent of Spaniards are unemployed compared to 25.93 percent at the end of March.

This is the largest second quarter reduction in unemployment since figures began to be kept and means the number of people out of work has fallen by 425,500, or 7 percent, over the past 12-month period.

The record number of tourists which visited Spain in the first six months of the year is a major factor in these positive numbers given that virtually all of the new jobs in the second quarter were in the service sector, where 378,700 jobs were created.

Meanwhile 56,700 jobs were created in the industrial sector and 36,900 in construction. These positive figures were balanced out slightly by the destruction of 69,800 jobs in agriculture.

The EPA also showed a slight fall in unemployment young people, with a fall of 40,800 in youth unemployment, although it shows that 53.1 percent of Spaniards under the age of 25 are still without a job.

There was also a reduction in households in which all of the family members were out of work between April and June, with the number of families without a single member in employment falling by 7 percent, although 1,834,000 are still in that difficult situation.

The EPA comes just 24 hours after the Bank of Spain said that the Spanish economy had grown by 0.5 percent in the second quarter of 2014, predicting overall growth of 1.3 percent in GDP for 2014 and 2 percent for 2015 with further reductions in the number of people out of work.