France's unemployment target reached despite grim forecasts

The Socialists' target to bring down the rampant number of jobseekers by the year-end was already reached, French Labor Minister Michel Sapin said on Friday. Speaking to Radio Classique, Sapin noted that the government's "willingness" to reverse the unemployment trend by the end of 2013 was "already achieved as in October, the number of unemployed people has decreased for the first time since five years." "Reducing the number of people without work during one month, which is not so bad, is not enough. This must decrease month after month, in the long term," the minister stressed. With the jobless claims hit a 16-year high at 10.9 percent during te third quarter of the year, the government introduced "jobs of the future" plan which aimed at facilitating the recruitment of poorly-qualified young workers from disadvantaged suburbs and rural areas mainly in the public sector. "What matters, is not whether jobs are sponsored, but whether they are useful and provide a lasting solution," Sapin said in repsonse to the opposition critics over the government's use of state-backed job contracts to cut the unemplyment rate. At the end of October, France numbered 20,500 less jobseekers to 3.275 million, compared to September, the lowest decline in job claims reported since May. On Thursday, the national statistics institute Insee painted a grim outlook, forecasting that French gross domestic product would grow by only 0.2 percent in both the first and second quarters of 2014. As a result, the unemployment rate would reach 11 percent by mid-2014, it added.