The reforms include a one-year plan to try to reduce unemployment among young people — now around 40 percent — by offering companies major reductions in social security payments for anyone they contract under 30 years of age for part-time work.

“It’s an employment strategy that aims to encourage part-time work in Spain,” Labor Minister Valeriano Gomez told reporters.

“We believe this is one area in which we have an important shortfall and which is proving to be a good job-creation policy for young workers in the rest of the European Union,” he said.

Gomez said the government would be setting up retraining programs directed at those over 45 years of age who had been employed in the construction industry and other sectors battered by the economic crisis of recent years.

The Socialist government also approved a new monthly subsidy of €400 ($540) for unemployed people whose benefits have run out and who attend government job relocation training courses.

The measure is expected to benefit 192,000 people and will run for six months at a cost of some €400 million ($540 million).

The measure replaces a previous program that provided a similar amount of money for people whose benefits had expired but did not require them to attend courses.

The reforms are part of a Social and Economic Pact between the government and labor unions signed Feb. 2 after months of negotiations. The main plank of that pact was to raise the retirement age gradually from 65 to 67 starting in 2013.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said then that the measures, which need parliamentary approval, were a signal to the rest of the world that Spain will recover from its economic woes.

Spain has been weathering strong market pressure in recent months amid speculation it may not be able to handle its debt and might require a bailout of government finances as have Ireland or Greece.

The Europe Union’s top job creator just three years ago, Spain now has a euro-zone high jobless rate of 20.3 as it emerges from nearly two years of recession. The actual number of unemployed as of the end of 2010 is nearly 4.7 million.

But the National Statistics Institute confirmed Friday preliminary estimates that the economy grew 0.2 percent in the fourth quarter compared with the third, and contracted 0.1 percent for all of 2010, less than the 0.3 percent forecast by the government.

The Institute said fourth-quarter gross domestic product grew 0.6 percent compared with the final quarter of 2009.

Spain posted modest growth in the first two quarters and was flat in the third.