PARIS: Unemployment in France hit a new record high in September with the number of people officially registered as looking for work rising 60,000 to 3.29 million, the labour ministry said yesterday.
French President Francois Hollande has pledged to reverse the trend of rising unemployment in France by the end of the year, and while the government maintains this will still happen, critics are increasingly doubtful.
Last month’s increase in job seekers is artificially high due to a glitch that saw the jobless rate in August drop dramatically, before being revised. The ministry had initially announced that the number of registered job seekers in August dropped by 50,000 to 3.23 million — the first fall in more than two years.
But it later revised the figure and said the number of job seekers actually only fell between 22,000 and 29,000. The mistake was blamed on a malfunction with mobile phone operator SFR that meant some job seekers did not renew their registration because they did not receive reminders managed by the operator.
Stripping out the glitch, the number of job seekers went up by 10,000 from July to September, which the government said indicated that the upward trend in unemployment was slowing.
In its statement, the labour ministry pointed to an improvement in youth unemployment, saying the number of young job seekers had increased an average of 1.1 percent a month from January to April, but subsequently dropped 0.5 percent a month.
Overall, the total number of people looking for a job or just for additional hours of employment rose to 4.84 million in September.
AFP
