France saw its fastest job creation last quarter since the eve of the financial crisis in 2007 with 52,200 net jobs created, data from national statistics office INSEE showed on Thursday. The 0.3 percent increase in the non-farm private sector in the three months to end-September, driven by a 29,600 increase in temp jobs, marked a pick-up in job creation from the 0.2 percent increase in the second quarter.
Under this measure, the number of French people in jobs has increased every quarter since the second quarter of 2015. Coming after news last month that France saw its steepest monthly fall ever in jobless claims in September, the job report is a sign a fragile recovery could finally be strong enough to make a dent in an unemployment rate of around 10 percent. The improvement offers President Francois Hollande a bit of relief on a front where he otherwise has made little progress since taking office in 2012, despite pledges to not run for a second term unless he steered unemployment onto a convincingly downward path. With one of the highest birth rates in Europe, France needs to create more jobs than its neighbours to offset the rise in the labour force and get the jobless rate to fall.