* Spain's jobless rise after 3 months of falls
* Service sector layoffs driven by slow tourist season
* Ireland records slowest rate of increase since April 2008
By Paul Day and Carmel Crimmins
MADRID/DUBLIN, Sept 2 (Reuters) - Registered jobless figures from Spain and Ireland, both struggling with the fallout from burst property bubbles, showed on Wednesday that the two crisis-hit economies could be taking different paths.
Spanish jobless claims rose in August for the first time in four months as a weakened tourism industry took on fewer than usual workers for the summer while Ireland's jobless rate increased at the slowest pace since April 2008.
Spain had the highest unemployment rate in the euro zone at 18.5 percent in July followed by Ireland with 12.5 percent, according to European Union data released on Tuesday.
"It's difficult to extrapolate from just one month's data ... but any economy contracting at 1 percent quarter on quarter in the second quarter, like Spain, is going to be suffering a weak labour market for a while yet," said BNP Paribas economist Dominic Bryant.
In both economies, unemployment was expected to carry on rising into next year with one in five Spanish workers bound for the welfare line. Irish joblessness will increase at a slower pace but economists expect unemployment to hit 15.45 percent next year.
GENERALISED DOWNTURN
For Ireland, economists have pulled back from their bleakest forecasts as resilient exports, a slowdown in the decline of retail sales and improving surveys suggest stabilisation is on the cards.
"(In Ireland) unfortunately we have to work through a major housing adjustment and that goes into 2010, which will hold back the economy, but outside of housing there are signs that things are stabilising," said Oliver Mangan, chief bond economist at Allied Irish Banks.
Spain's own economic downturn has become more generalised from the property slump which began last year, spreading into the services sector on the back of sliding domestic demand.
August's job seekers found hotel and restaurant work on Spain's coasts hard to come by this year as the slump meant fewer Spanish tourists and a drop in foreign visitors, especially amongst sun-seekers from Britain and Germany.
The government said in May it expected a 10 percent fall in tourist arrivals over the summer months, a serious blow for an industry which contributes around 11 percent to Spanish gross domestic product.
The government said the jobless rise in August had been expected and continued a trend started in 2001.
"Even during the boom years, August reports a rise in registered jobless," Economy Minister Elena Salgado told reporters in Brussels.
JOB MIGRATION
In Ireland, the total number of people claiming unemployment benefit in August, including some part-time workers, was 428,800.
The large-scale layoffs seen post-Christmas have eased in Ireland and economists said the emigration of Eastern European workers had also helped slow the rise.
"One of the reasons for the slower rate of increase in unemployment is a sharp pick-up in the emigration of Eastern European workers," said Ronnie O'Toole, chief economist at National Irish Bank.
Some 5 million immigrants, mostly from Latin America and Northern Africa, have come to work in Spain in the last 10 years with many newcomers taking temporary jobs in the construction industry and services sector.
Jobless numbers in Spain rose 84,985 or 2.4 percent from July to 3.62 million people, just over a million more than a year earlier, though there have been signs the government's massive stimulus plan has helped ease layoffs.
While Spain saw the ranks of jobless jump in August due to the slow tourist numbers, the government's stimulus plan helped to keep an estimated 400,000 people, mostly hit by the construction downturn, in jobs.
The government poured some 25 billion euros ($35.60 billion) into stimulus measures to July, mostly for infrastructure projects which include contracts as varied as re-bricking a Valencian bicycle path and moving national monuments from one plaza to another.
Critics note the "Plan-E" jobs are temporary and once contracts expire at the end of the year there will be a surge in new dole claimants. (Reporting by Paul Day, editing by Mike Peacock)