France's unemployment rate is now above the eurozone average for the first time since 2007, according to Eurostat data, offering a stark reminder of the Socialist government's struggle to turn a shaky recovery into jobs. The French unemployment rate stood at 10.8 percent in October, the third consecutive month at that level and up from 10.7 percent in July, while the jobless rate in the wider euro area dropped 0.1 point to 10.7 percent in October, Eurostat data published on Tuesday showed.
That was the first time since November 2007 that the euro zone's second-biggest economy fared worse than the average of 19 countries sharing the euro, the data showed. France was also one of only four European Union countries where the unemployment rate has increased in the past year, while it fell in 24 member states. Countries more affected by the 2011/2012 sovereign debt crisis, such as Spain and Italy, still have higher unemployment rates, but the gap with France is shrinking, with some economists blaming timid labour market reforms in France.
French President Francois Hollande has said he would not run for a second term in 2017 presidential elections if he does not get unemployment falling convincingly lower. The French economy has been gradually gaining momentum, but it has yet to feed through significantly into the labour market despite a range of state-funded schemes to get people into work.
Government ministers have argued that France's dynamic demographics explains the difficulty in bringing down unemployment: it has the highest fertility rate in Europe and some 800,000 young people arrive on the job market every year, more than the number of retirements. But economists say this fails to explain why the pace of job creations in France lags behind that in the euro zone. "The demographics explanation doesn't add up over the recent period," Denis Ferrand, an economist at COE-Rexecode, said. "Yes, we need more job creations than other countries to bring down unemployment, but we create fewer jobs than elsewhere, that's the main factor," he said.
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