France's unemployment rate hit a 14-year high in the first quarter of 2013, casting fresh doubt on President Francois Hollande's goal of reversing the rising jobless trend by year-end. The jobless rate of 10.8 percent, published by the INSEE statistics agency on Thursday, was the highest on record since the first quarter of 1999. It was in line with a forecast of 10.9 percent in a Reuters poll and up from a revised 10.5 percent in the final quarter of 2012.
The euro zone's second-largest economy fell into a shallow recession in the first quarter and the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund both forecast that it will slightly contract overall in 2013. All of the economists polled by Reuters said they believed the government would miss its target of reversing unemployment by year-end, a goal Hollande set a few months after winning power in May 2012 and says he will stand by despite widespread scepticism.
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