PARIS: The unemployment in France grew by 0.4 percent in December 2015 from a month earlier and saw a year-on-year growth of 2.6 percent, official figures showed on Wednesday.
According to the Labor Ministry’s monthly data, a total of more than 3.59 million people in the French mainland were reported to be jobless in the last month of 2015, adding more pressure on the government on its battle to lower the joblessness rate currently at 10.2 percent.
With the overseas departments taken into account, the number of jobseekers inched up by 0.4 percent to 3.848 million compared to November data.
December data was the result notably of the decline in many businesses following the terror attacks in November 2015, according to the ministry.
In a last ditch to deliver on his promise to lower unemployment rate, French President Francois Hollande unveiled last week a 2-billion-euro plan (2.174 billion U.S. dollar) to create more jobs via improving training for 500,000 unemployed people and offering incentives to encourage recruitment.
“The growth is still too weak to reduce unemployment. We must act to make growth more robust and job creation more abundant,” Hollande said, stressing the necessity to improve training so that “the greatest number (of jobseekers) can benefit from the opportunities provided by new technologies.”
