France's unemployment rate shot up at a record rate to 8.7 percent in the first quarter of 2009, official data showed on Thursday as economists warned it could rise to as high as 10 percent this year. "It's clearly a bad figure," Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said on French radio.
"There has been a deterioration in the job situation which is quite simply a consequence of a deterioration in the economic situation." The unemployment rate in the fourth quarter of 2008 was 7.6 percent. The figures refer to mainland France. The rate rises to 9.1 percent when it includes overseas territories such as the Caribbean islands of Guadeloupe and Martinique which were crippled by weeks of strikes over pay earlier this year.
France has not seen such high quarterly growth in unemployment since 1975 when the national statistics agency INSEE began recording comparable data. The rate itself has however been higher at 8.8 percent in 2006. Lagarde said that the situation was "deteriorating less sharply than elsewhere" and said the rate was "under the European Union average." Eurozone unemployment hit a decade-high of 9.2 percent in April. The European Commission has forecast that unemployment in France will rise to 9.6 percent in 2009 and 10.7 percent in 2010. Jacques Freyssinet, an economics professor in Paris, said: "A rise towards 10 percent unemployment seems plausible."
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