France's Socialist government is fast-tracking the launch a scheme to create 150,000 state-sponsored jobs for youths, moving to tackle rampant unemployment and overturn a slide in President Francois Hollande's approval ratings, reports Reuters.
A cornerstone of Hollande's plan to stimulate job creation through state subsidies, the "jobs of the future" programme will offer mainly public sector contracts to poorly qualified youngsters from city suburbs and rural areas at a cost of around 2 billion euros (1.58 billion pounds) this year and next.
Echoing an initiative by a previous left-wing government, the scheme has found little support among labour economists and employers, some of whom argue it is costly and offers few guarantees of long-term employment.
But Labour Minister Michel Sapin said the focus would be on creating long-term jobs and professional training. "This is not about fixing the numbers," he told a news conference.
Nearly one in four French youngsters are out of work.
Parliament will convene for a special session on September 10, two weeks earlier than planned, to examine the programme, a government spokeswoman said on Wednesday, two days after jobless claims spiked to their highest level in more than 13 years.
Hollande hopes the scheme will give him a boost after a run of opinion polls in recent days showing his approval ratings tumbling, in one case to as low as 44 percent, from above 60 percent after his mid-May election. One survey found 72 percent of respondents think he is acting too slowly to resolve the country's problems.
Read more of this report from Reuters.