France's unemployment rate unexpectedly fell to 8.3 percent in March, its lowest in almost 24 years, from 8.4 percent the previous month, according to provisional Labour Ministry data released on Thursday.
While the figures chime with a jump in French business confidence reported earlier, controversy surrounding the jobless data mean they are unlikely to give much of a political boost to the ruling right wing's presidential candidate, Nicolas Sarkozy.
The European Union statistics office, Eurostat, last month put the February jobless rate at a provisional 8.8 percent because it took into account a labour force survey, which French national statistics office INSEE says may not be reliable.
Trade unions representing French statisticians and civil servants had called for the data to be delayed until after the election period because of question marks over their accuracy. However, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told France Info radio earlier on Thursday that the most important point was that the jobless measure was trending downwards.
Comments
Comments are closed.