The number of category A job seekers - that is registered job seekers who are fully unemployed - rose 1.2% in March from February to 3,224,600, according to figures from Dares, the French labor ministry's data department, reports Fox Business.
That breaks the previous record of 3.196 million seen in January 1997 and marks an 11.5% increase from March a year ago, just before President Fraçois Hollande took power in May.
It was the 23rd consecutive month unemployment in absolute terms has increased. According to the Dares data, which goes back to 1996, there have never been so many unemployed people in France.
The bleak data came the same day that Spain reported a further increase in its unemployment rate to 27.2%. Although lower, France's unemployment rate--which is reported separately and quarterly--reached a 13-year high of 10.6% at the end of last year and is expected to top 11% in June, according to recent forecasts from statistics office Insee.
Mr. Hollande has pledged to direct all his efforts into inverting the rising curve of unemployment by the end of the year. But with the economy showing no sign of the growth needed to create jobs, the government is relying on state-sponsored incentive schemes, in particular new contracts designed to encourage the recruitment of young workers.
"The course I have fixed is to do everything for growth and jobs. As we don't have growth in 2013, and that is sure [�], the only way to bring down unemployment by the end of the year is to use mechanisms we have introduced," Mr. Hollande said at a press conference earlier Thursday in Beijing.
Since coming to power, Mr. Hollande has been confronted with a flat-lining economy and a string of high-profile plant closures sapping France's industrial base. Car maker PSA Peugeot Citroen (UG.FR) plans to shutter its totemic Aulnay factory north of Paris, while steel maker ArcelorMittal (MT) is mothballing two blast furnaces in northeastern France.
Read more of this report from Fox Business.