It was the 17th month in a row that the number of workers looking for jobs in France, the second-biggest eurozone economy, had risen, with youth and older people the most affected.

When the numbers from France's overseas departments and territories were included, the number of unemployed reached 3.3 million, a 12-month increase of 10 percent.

The strong rise was "foreseeable", according to a labour ministry statement which reaffirmed the government's goal of stemming the rise by the end of next year through reform and growth measures that have already been announced.

The national statistics institute INSEE has estimated that French unemployment could reach 10.2 percent of the workforce by the end of this year.

Long-term unemployment, essentially those who have been searching for more than one year, reached an all-time high of 1.8 million people, the ministry said.

On October 8, the Bank of France estimated that the French economy had contracted by 0.1 percent in the third quarter of the year.

If confirmed by INSEE, it would be the first quarterly contraction since France exited recession in the spring of 2009.