Spain’s four largest newspapers have reduced staff jobs by 39 per cent since 2003 a report by PRNoticias claimed this week, according to the Shaping the Future of the Newspaper blog.

The publications El Pais, El Mundo, ABC and La Razon have removed 906 jobs between 2003 and 2009 from the 2,325 positions which existed seven years ago.

El Pais, which continues to be the largest employer, has reduced its payroll by 43 percent from 891 employees to 507. According to PRNoticias, the reduction does not mean that all the jobs have been lost because the Prisa Group transferred some of the newspaper’s divisions to other parts of the company.

However, the steeper reduction was introduced by ABC, which cut by half its personnel from 774 to 375 staff members. El Mundo also has less staff as it reduced its staff by 35 percent from 446 people.

The SFN blog also reports that 6,500 Spanish journalists are currently recorded as unemployed and it is predicted that this will increase to almost 10,000 by the end of the year.