And what if François Hollande’s policy wasn’t so bad after all?
The results are starting to come in, albeit belatedly…
The unemployment rate as defined by the ILO fell to 9.7% at the end of 2016. This marks the second consecutive annual decline, even if that of the eurozone is more pronounced.
Measured by Insee using the International Labour Organization (ILO) criteria, it fell in the fourth quarter to 9.7% of the active population in metropolitan France (10% for the whole of France, excluding Mayotte). This is a 0.2-point drop over one year, similar to that calculated in 2015 at the same time.
A little less than 2.8 million people are still unemployed in metropolitan France, according to this definition. Which is 68,000 fewer than last year at the same time.
192,000 jobs were created last year, a figure almost twice as high as in 2015, and the highest since 2007, the year before the financial crisis.
Eurostat statistics for December in the eurozone indicate an unemployment rate for France of 9.6%, equal to the average of that of the nineteen member states sharing the single currency.
Twelve of the nineteen member states fare better than France, such as Slovakia (8.8%) or Belgium (7.6%), the Netherlands (5.4%), and much better in the case of Germany (3.9%).
