Paris - Unemployment rose by a further 52,400 in October to reach 2.63 million, officials reported Thursday evening, while cautioning that further rises in joblessness were foreseen. The French labour office said the October rise was 2 per cent, and including the numbers of those who were only minimally employed unemployment had reached 4.02 million. This was 20.1 per cent higher than in October 2008.
Economics Minister Christine Lagarde drew a positive conclusion from the data, saying developments had shown the effectiveness of the labour market policies. She said 969,000 employees had benefited from various job-promotion measures.
But officials cautioned that the job market situation would still deterioriate for a "number of quarters" since the economic recovery did not result in an immediate drop in unemployment.
