French private-sector job growth grew at its fastest rate in six years in the second quarter of the year, adding 91,700 jobs, data from the INSEE statistics agency showed on Friday, reports U.S. News & World Report.
The new jobs represented a 0.5 percent increase on the previous quarter, bringing the overall level to 19.21 million. The April-June period marked the 11th straight quarter of net new job creation in the private sector.
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. The 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.
Philippe Waechter, director of economic research at Natixis Asset Management, said that while the jobs figures marked another good set of data both for France and the broader euro zone, French labour reforms remained necessary.
Waechter said such reforms were needed to ensure that employment growth could be maintained even if there was a downturn in the global economy.
"If the French economy could rapidly create jobs even when there is a downturn in the cycle, especially in sectors showing the strongest growth, then this would strengthen its ability to have some self-control over its own economic growth, which is what we are looking for," he wrote in a note.
Read more of this Reuters report published by U.S. News & World Report.