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Jobless total finally falls
The unemployment rate has fallen slightly - ministers hope for bigger falls next year
The number of people without work in France has fallen slightly, according to the latest figures.
The unemployment rate in the first six months of 2010 stood at 9.3 percent in metropolitan France, compared with 9.6 percent at the end of last year.
‘It’s the first significant fall since the start of the economic crisis and after 21 months of increase,’ said minister for the economy Christine Lagarde.
However ministers were wary about reading too much into the figures.
‘We have to be cautious because it’s not a massive fall,’ said junior finance minister Laurent Wauquiez.
He said they hoped to see more significant reductions from 2011.
At 9.3 percent the jobless total is still well above the 7.2 percent recorded in 2008 before the effects of the crisis took hold.
The figures also suggest that the number of new jobs created generally involve short-term temporary contracts rather than long-term jobs.
The total number of people out of work is put at 2.624 million, compared with Spain where the total is approaching four million.
In Germany the government hopes the unemployment figure will come back below three million this year.