French unemployment at 10-year low

Ag AFP

Paris: French President Emmanuel Macron received a boost on Thursday from figures showing unemployment at a 10-year low, but the 8.7-percent rate is still much higher than in other European heavyweights.

The jobless indicator inched down by 0.1 point from the same period in 2018 to its lowest level since 2009, the national statistics institute INSEE said.

Macron, a pro-business centrist, has made cutting unemployment his main domestic priority and it has fallen -- albeit gradually -- from 9.4 percent when he took office in May 2017. One subset that did see a sharp drop this time was the "halo of unemployment," which INSEE describes as those who "wish to work but are ''classed'' as being inactive either because they are not immediately available to work (within two weeks) or because they are not actively seeking work." Their number fell by 89,000 on a 12-month comparison to 1.4 million.