Hollande signals there is more to be done on unemployment

French president Francois Hollande has welcomed figures yesterday evening (Monday) that shows a fall in unemployment by 100,000 over the year. However, it admitted that it was only a start. 

Employment pamphlets sit on display as a jobseeker stands at a service desk inside a Pole Emploi job center, the French national employment agency, in Montpellier, France, in February 25, 2014 Balint Porneczi/Bloomberg via Getty Images

On a visit to a small business in the Val d’Oise department north of Paris, Hollande said he took some satisfaction from the fall in the figures, but added that there is still a lot do be done.

« We have created 240,000 jobs in 17 months,” he told reporters, noting that 100,000 of those jobs have been created since the beginning of the year.

]«Even if it is possible that there will be an augmentation in the figures next month [because of seasonal factors] it is also true that the downward movement in the figures has been constant over the past three months, the first time since 2008.

The figures from the Labour Ministry which were released Monday show that the number of people out of work in France fell to the lowest point in almost four years in November, dropping for the third month in a row, data showed on Monday.

The ministry said 3,447,000 people were registered as unemployed in mainland France last month - the lowest figure since January 2013, down 0.9 percent from October and 3.4 percent from November 2015.

It is the first time since February 2008 that the jobless figure has fallen for three consecutive months, Labour Minister Myriam El Khomri said in a statement.

"This decline in unemployment is significant," Khomri said, noting that it came after eight years of almost uninterrupted rises in unemployment.

Unemployment has remained stubbornly high throughout the five-year term of President Francois Hollande, contributing to his record unpopularity.

Hollande, who had staked his political future on reversing the trend in unemployment, has decided not to seek a second term in next year's presidential election.

Speaking at an event in the north of Paris, Hollande said that the November jobless numbers were satisfactory but that there was still a long way to go.

However, Gérard Cherpion, national secretary in charge of employment for the conservative Les Republicans party, said that the fall in unemployment has been a very long time coming.

“Francois Hollande and his government led by Manuel Valls have spent an untold amount of public money to achieve this artificial result.