The steady creation of new jobs is gradually helping heal France's labour market, which saw huge job losses after the 2008 global financial crisis. They pick up has also been giving President Emmanuel Macron a tailwind as his government pushes through reforms to ease labour regulations. But accelerating job creation has not yet been sufficient to bring unemployment substantially lower, partly because the number of people in the jobs market has also been rising. Private sector job growth accelerated to 0.7 percent in the services sector, accounting for the large majority of new jobs, and by 0.4 percent in the construction industry, while remaining flat in the manufacturing sector.
Copyright Reuters, 2017