France’s socialist government is to subsidise more than half a million jobs this year in a bid to meet President François Hollande’s promise to halt fast-rising unemployment that has helped fuel growing support for the far-right National Front, reports The Financial Times.
Mr Hollande has stuck by his pledge to “invert the curve” of unemployment by the end of this year despite stalled growth and jobless figures rising at a rate of about 30,000 a month that have sent his approval ratings plunging to record lows.
His Socialist party was knocked out of a parliamentary by-election last week by the National Front for the second time in recent months, leaving Marine Le Pen’s populist party in a fiercely contested race with the centre-right UMP in the run-off vote in central France on Sunday.
Insee, the national statistics institute, last week forecast that unemployment in mainland France would continue to rise from 10.4 per cent of the workforce midyear to 10.7 per cent at the end of the year.
But Michel Sapin, the labour minister, said the government would add 100,000 state-aided jobs to 340,000 already programmed, on top of a further “jobs for the future” project to hire 100,000 unskilled youngsters on the public purse.
The UMP has accused the government of a secret plan to massage the unemployment figures.
“There is no hidden plan,” Mr Sapin said in an interview with Le Parisien newspaper on Sunday. “Nobody thinks that we can resolve unemployment in the medium and long term just with subsidised jobs.”
The government, criticised for sharply increasing the tax burden on business since it took office a year ago, has stepped up its efforts to encourage enterprise, offering tax rebates on employment and relaxing some of France’s strict labour market rules.
“What will allow durable employment creation is growth and business activity,” Mr Sapin said. “But while growth is stalled what should we do? Should we count the jobless without doing anything?”
Pierre Moscovici, the finance minister, warned in a television interview about the risk of rising populism during an economic crisis. He was speaking as voting was under way in a by-election caused by the resignation earlier this year of Jérôme Cahuzac, the former budget minister revealed to have held a secret Swiss bank account.
“When you have youth unemployment hitting 25 per cent, you have to find a solution. These are not fake jobs. Our whole social policy is committed to the battle against unemployment,” Mr Moscovici said.
Read more of this report from The Financial Times.