Jobless figures down in January

LAST month saw the largest drop in jobless people since December 2007.

‘Category A’ unemployed people, that is jobseekers who did not work at all in January, dropped 0.5%, or 19,100 fewer than in December when the jobless figures hit 3.5 million.

These figures “encourage us to continue” [with current policies], said Prime Minister Manuel Valls, while Work Minister François Rebsamen was pleased that the drop was especially notable among the young.

Youth unemployment dropped 1.4% last month, even though it is still up (0.4%) year on year.

Unions and employers’ bodies said the drop was good news, but more effort was still required.

CGT union leader Philippe Martinez said we must not be “satisfied with the slight lowering” and more work-focused policies were needed. Pierre Gattaz of the employers’ federation Medef said: “It doesn’t let us off from making structural reform.”

Opposition parties, meanwhile, noted that when the first three unemployment categories were combined, the figures went up overall, by 16,400. This includes, for example, those who are registered unemployed but did some short-term work in the month.

What is more unemployment is still well up year on year – 4.8% for category A and 6.2% for A, B and C.

However jobseekers aged over 50 are faring the worst, with figures increasing slightly in January and up a dramatic 9.6% year on year.

Another worrying trend is for periods of unemployment to be longer, with the average period, all categories combined, now being a year and a half, up two weeks last month.

A plan of measures against long-term employment was presented recently by the government, unions, local authorities and associations in a bid to tackle this.