{"version":"1.9","identifier":"3c479df6-a936-498f-b606-bb25b68100dd","language":"en-US","title":"France's jobless rate dips to 8.2%, but every age group is worse off than a year ago","layout":{"columns":7,"width":1024,"margin":32,"gutter":20},"componentLayouts":{"text":{"columnStart":0,"columnSpan":7,"maximumContentWidth":720,"margin":{"top":12,"bottom":12}},"photo":{"columnStart":0,"columnSpan":7,"margin":{"top":20,"bottom":20}}},"componentTextStyles":{"default":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":18,"lineHeight":29,"textColor":"#171717"},"headline":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue-Bold","fontSize":36,"lineHeight":42,"conditional":[{"conditions":{"maxViewportWidth":480},"fontSize":28,"lineHeight":34}]},"intro":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":20,"lineHeight":28,"textColor":"#555555"},"caption":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":13,"lineHeight":19,"textColor":"#666666"},"byline":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":13,"lineHeight":20,"textColor":"#666666"},"body":{"fontName":"HelveticaNeue","fontSize":18,"lineHeight":29,"paragraphSpacingAfter":14,"linkStyle":{"textColor":"#00704a"}}},"metadata":{"canonicalURL":"https://567politics.com/news/france-unemployment-q3-2026-insee-8-2-percent-youth-seniors-farandou-medef-cgt-november-2026","datePublished":"2026-11-10T17:03:02.779029Z","dateModified":"2026-11-10T17:22:38.374034Z","authors":["567 Politics staff"],"excerpt":"Insee's 0.1-point quarterly dip is within the survey margin; the 0.4-point annual rise is not. The minister sees resilience, employers and unions opposite lessons.","thumbnailURL":"https://pub-fac99da959e344fe99d810d309cef7df.r2.dev/photos/article/3c479df6-a936-498f-b606-bb25b68100dd/0a5d5b2e0dcaca56039f1630b0c4019b.jpg","keywords":["fr"],"generatorName":"Frog News","generatorVersion":"1.0"},"components":[{"role":"title","text":"France's jobless rate dips to 8.2%, but every age group is worse off than a year ago","textStyle":"headline","layout":"text"},{"role":"intro","text":"Insee's 0.1-point quarterly dip is within the survey margin; the 0.4-point annual rise is not. The minister sees resilience, employers and unions opposite lessons.","textStyle":"intro","layout":"text"},{"role":"byline","text":"By 567 Politics staff · Published November 10, 2026","textStyle":"byline","layout":"text"},{"role":"photo","URL":"https://pub-fac99da959e344fe99d810d309cef7df.r2.dev/photos/article/3c479df6-a936-498f-b606-bb25b68100dd/0a5d5b2e0dcaca56039f1630b0c4019b.jpg","caption":"Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou in his official portrait (2025). · Matthieu Raffard, official portrait, Licence Ouverte (Etalab), via Wikimedia Commons","accessibilityCaption":"Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou in his official portrait (2025).","layout":"photo"},{"role":"caption","text":"Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou in his official portrait (2025). · Matthieu Raffard, official portrait, Licence Ouverte (Etalab), via Wikimedia Commons","textStyle":"caption","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"France's unemployment rate slipped to 8.2% in the third quarter of 2026, down 0.1 point from the spring, but it was 0.4 point higher than a year earlier and the official figures show the deterioration spreading across every age group. Labor Minister Jean-Pierre Farandou said on Tuesday that the labor market \"tient bien,\" or is holding up well. The same release from the national statistics institute, Insee, shows youth unemployment up 1.6 points in a year, long-term unemployment at its highest level since 2022 and the jobless rate among people aged 50 and over at a four-year high.\n\nThe numbers arrive at an awkward moment for the government of Prime Minister [Sébastien Lecornu](https://567politics.com/politicians/sebastien-lecornu). The economy contracted by 0.1% in the same quarter, private-sector payroll employment has fallen for seven consecutive quarters on a year-on-year basis, and a minimum-wage increase announced on Monday has drawn objections from both employers and unions. Each side reads the jobless figures as support for its own prescription.\n\n## What Insee reported on Tuesday\n\nAccording to [Insee's Informations rapides No. 270](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/9118603), published on November 10, the number of unemployed people in France under the International Labour Organization (ILO) definition fell by 47,000 between the second and third quarters, to about 2.6 million. The unemployment rate edged down from 8.3% to 8.2% of the labor force. Compared with the third quarter of 2025, the rate is up 0.4 point, or about 150,000 more unemployed people. Insee noted that the rate remains 2.3 points below its mid-2015 peak.\n\nThe ILO definition counts a person as unemployed if they had no work during the survey's reference week, were available to start within two weeks and had actively looked for a job in the previous four weeks, or had found one starting within three months. The figures come from Insee's quarterly Labour Force Survey (enquête Emploi), are seasonally adjusted, cover France excluding Mayotte, and carry a margin of plus or minus 0.3 point on both the level and the quarter-to-quarter change, according to the release. That margin matters: a 0.1-point quarterly decline is within the survey's statistical noise, while the 0.4-point annual rise reflects a sustained trend across several quarters.\n\nInsee also said its first estimate for the second quarter, published on August 7, was not revised.\n\n**France's ILO unemployment rate by quarter, 2022-2026**\n\nPercent of the labor force, seasonally adjusted, France excluding Mayotte. Insee gives a margin of +/- 0.3 point on each estimate.","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"},{"role":"htmltable","html":"
QuarterAll ages 15+Ages 25-49
2022 Q17.4%6.7%
2022 Q27.5%6.7%
2022 Q37.2%6.5%
2022 Q47.2%6.5%
2023 Q17.2%6.5%
2023 Q27.3%6.7%
2023 Q37.4%6.8%
2023 Q47.6%7.1%
2024 Q17.5%6.9%
2024 Q27.4%6.7%
2024 Q37.4%6.6%
2024 Q47.4%6.7%
2025 Q17.5%6.8%
2025 Q27.6%7%
2025 Q37.8%7.1%
2025 Q48%7%
2026 Q18.2%7.3%
2026 Q28.3%7.5%
2026 Q38.2%7.3%
","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"Source: [Insee, Informations rapides No. 270, 10 November 2026](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/9118603)\n\nThe series shows the pattern behind the headline. Unemployment was flat at 7.4% for most of 2024, then rose in six of the next seven quarters to a peak of 8.3% in the spring of 2026. The latest reading is a pause in that climb rather than a reversal, and it leaves the rate at roughly its level of late 2019, before the pandemic.\n\n## Who is losing ground\n\nThe age breakdown is where the year-on-year deterioration is clearest. Over the quarter, unemployment fell 0.5 point among 15-to-24-year-olds, to 21.0%, and 0.2 point among 25-to-49-year-olds, to 7.3%. Among people aged 50 and over it was roughly stable at 5.6%, which Insee described as the highest level since the first quarter of 2022. Over the year, however, the rate rose in every age group: up 1.6 points for the youngest workers, 0.2 point for the middle group and 0.5 point for those 50 and older.","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"},{"role":"htmltable","html":"
GroupQ3 2026 rateChange on quarterChange on year
Ages 15-2421.0%-0.5 pt+1.6 pt
Ages 25-497.3%-0.2 pt+0.2 pt
Ages 50+5.6%+0.1 pt+0.5 pt
Women7.8%-0.3 pt0.0 pt
Men8.6%+0.1 pt+0.8 pt
","layout":"text"},{"role":"body","format":"markdown","text":"The figures in the table come from the seasonally adjusted summary table in [Insee's release](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/9118603). The sex breakdown points in the same direction. Women's unemployment fell 0.3 point on the quarter to 7.8% and was unchanged over the year, while men's rose slightly to 8.6% and is 0.8 point higher than a year ago. Among young men aged 15 to 24 the annual rise was 2.5 points.\n\nLong-term unemployment is also edging up. Insee counted 680,000 people who said they had been out of work and looking for a job for at least a year, 7,000 more than in the previous quarter and 82,000 more than a year earlier. The long-term unemployment rate was stable at 2.1%, the highest since the second quarter of 2022.\n\nOther measures were more mixed. The employment rate for people aged 15 to 64 rose 0.1 point to 69.1%, which Insee called \"quasi stable,\" but it was 0.2 point lower than a year earlier. Among 15-to-24-year-olds it fell 0.8 point over the year, to 33.7%, while the employment rate for 50-to-64-year-olds matched its highest level since Insee began measuring it in 1975. The \"halo\" around unemployment, the 1.9 million people who want a job but do not meet the ILO definition because they are not searching or not available, held roughly steady at 4.3% of the working-age population. Underemployment, mostly part-time workers who want more hours, rose 0.2 point to 4.6% of people in work.\n\n## The weak economy behind the numbers\n\nThe jobless figures sit alongside other recent Insee releases that point to a stalling economy. [Insee's first estimate of third-quarter GDP](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/9111036), published October 30, showed output falling 0.1% after a flat second quarter. Household consumption accelerated, but business and household investment fell for a second quarter and exports dropped 1.7%. An earlier 567 Politics report covered [how that contraction fed into the 2027 budget debate](https://567politics.com/news/france-q3-gdp-contraction-2027-budget-assembly-lescure-october-2026).\n\nPayroll data tell a similar story. [Insee's flash estimate of private-sector payroll employment](https://www.insee.fr/fr/statistiques/9109624) showed a loss of 25,800 jobs between June and September, a 0.1% decline. Private employment was 0.3% below its level of September 2025, about 69,800 fewer jobs, the seventh straight quarter of year-on-year decline, and 0.7% below its peak in the first quarter of 2024. Insee said apprenticeship and other work-study contracts contributed strongly to the quarterly fall. It also noted that private employment remains 4.9% above its end-2019 level.\n\n## The full-employment law's share of the rise\n\nOne question hangs over the trend: how much of it reflects a change in who is counted. The \"loi pour le plein emploi,\" passed in December 2023, required recipients of the RSA minimum income, young people supported by local Missions locales and people with disabilities supported by Cap emploi to register with the public employment service, France Travail, from early 2025. Registration does not automatically make someone unemployed under the ILO definition, but it can push people into active job search, which can move them from inactivity into the unemployment count.\n\nInsee tracks that effect each quarter. In Tuesday's release it estimated that, over the seven quarters since the end of 2024, households receiving the RSA contributed about 0.29 point of the 0.84-point cumulative rise in the unemployment rate, slightly more than a third. Young people aged 15 to 29 registered with France Travail contributed about 0.06 point. Together the two target groups account for about 0.35 point, \"moins de la moitié,\" or less than half, of the rise since late 2024, according to the release.\n\nInsee attached strong caveats. It said these contributions \"doivent toutefois être considérées avec prudence,\" given survey variability and the small size of the populations involved, and that they are accounting contributions \"qui ne permettent pas de distinguer les effets de la loi des effets conjoncturels,\" meaning they cannot separate the law's effect from the effect of the economic cycle on the same groups. The institute also reported that the unemployment rate among RSA recipients fell in the third quarter for the first time since the law took effect, by 1.9 points to 46.2%, while their employment rate rebounded 1.9 points to 26.8%, almost back to its end-2024 level.\n\nThat leaves more than half of the rise unexplained by the law's target groups, a share that is consistent with, but does not prove, a broader cyclical slowdown.\n\n## The minister: a \"resilient\" market\n\nFarandou, appearing on franceinfo's morning program on Tuesday, framed the figures as a sign of resilience. \"Le marché du travail est quand même résilient,\" he said, pointing to \"une croissance ralentie.\" He added: \"On a un marché du travail qui tient bien. C'est satisfaisant de ce côté-là,\" and said \"le taux d'emploi augmente,\" according to [franceinfo's report of the interview](https://www.franceinfo.fr/economie/emploi/chomage/chomage-le-marche-du-travail-tient-bien-note-jean-pierre-farandou-qui-parle-d-une-baisse-satisfaisante_8275784.html). As quoted by [20 Minutes](https://www.20minutes.fr/economie/4261829-20261110-taux-chomage-quasi-stable-troisieme-trimestre-hausse-depuis-an), he said the labor market \"fait mieux que résister\" despite international and trade tensions and that companies are still hiring.\n\nThe minister's statement on the employment rate matches the quarterly figure, which rose 0.1 point, but not the annual comparison, which shows the 15-to-64 employment rate down 0.2 point from a year earlier. Both readings appear in the same Insee release, and the quarterly change is within the survey margin.\n\nFarandou also defended the 1.6% \"coup de pouce\" to the minimum wage, the SMIC, that he announced on Monday after the government's social conference. \"Le coup de pouce que nous avons décidé n'abîmera pas l'emploi,\" he said. He cited an estimate from the Labor Ministry's statistics service, Dares, that 5,000 to 20,000 jobs could be affected, which he called \"très marginal\" compared with the 47,000 fall in unemployment in the third quarter. Those two numbers measure different things, one a projected effect on employment and the other a change in a survey count of the unemployed, so the comparison is the minister's framing rather than a like-for-like measure. Earlier 567 Politics reporting covers [the SMIC decision and the reaction to it](https://567politics.com/news/france-smic-coup-de-pouce-farandou-november-5-wages-november-2026).\n\n## Employers: growth and investment first\n\nThe employers' federation Medef reads the slowdown as a warning against raising labor costs. Its president, Patrick Martin, said on franceinfo on Monday that the SMIC increase was \"une mauvaise réponse à un vrai problème.\" Martin noted that the minimum wage had already risen three times in 2026 and said \"plus personne ne parle d'emploi, d'investissement et de croissance,\" which he called the real answer to the loss of purchasing power, according to [franceinfo](https://www.franceinfo.fr/economie/pouvoir-achat/hausse-du-smic-on-apporte-une-mauvaise-reponse-a-un-vrai-probleme-reagit-le-president-du-medef-patrick-martin_8274548.html).\n\n\"Il faut créer des emplois là où on est en train d'en détruire. Il faut de la croissance là où on frise la récession. Il faut investir alors que sur le dernier trimestre, l'investissement a plongé d'une manière effrayante,\" Martin said. He warned that payroll increases would leave \"des palanquée d'entreprises dans des secteurs à forte intensité de main-d'œuvre\" in the red. The Insee GDP release supports his point that investment fell in the third quarter, by 0.6%; whether a 1.6% SMIC rise would cost jobs on the scale he fears is a forecast, and the Dares range cited by the minister is lower.\n\n## Unions: the activation strategy has failed\n\nThe CGT union confederation argues the opposite: that the government's emphasis on pushing jobseekers into work, rather than creating jobs, explains the rising numbers. In a statement titled \"« Plein Emploi » : Encore un échec signé Macron !\", published in February by the [CGT's social-security staff federation](https://orgasociaux.cgt.fr/mediatheque/plein-emploi-encore-un-echec-signe-macron/), the union said the strategy rested on making jobseekers \"les responsables non seulement de leur situation mais également des déficits de l'Unedic.\" It criticized the 2024 unemployment-insurance changes that shortened benefit duration and tightened eligibility, and said the policy \"ne crée aucune richesse, aucune activité, et in fine aucun emploi.\"\n\nThe federation called for scrapping social-contribution exemptions and making the \"210 milliards d'aides publiques aux entreprises\" conditional on creating stable jobs, and for raising wages. It also highlighted the rising jobless rate among people over 50, linking it to the increase in the retirement age; Tuesday's figures show that rate at its highest since early 2022, though the release does not test any causal link. The statement predates Tuesday's figures, and 567 Politics found no CGT statement specifically on the third-quarter release in the sources opened for this article. CGT leader Sophie Binet discussed unemployment and the SMIC on franceinfo on Tuesday, but 567 Politics was not able to open a transcript of her remarks, so they are not quoted here.\n\n## What the figures can and cannot settle\n\nThe three positions rest on different readings of the same data. The government points to the quarterly dip and a stable employment rate. Employers point to falling investment and a shrinking private payroll. Unions point to the annual rise, the hardship of long-term jobseekers and the experience of older workers. The Insee release supports parts of each account: the quarterly improvement is real but within the survey margin, the annual deterioration is broad-based, and less than half of the rise since 2024 can be accounted for by the people the full-employment law brought into France Travail.\n\nWhat the numbers cannot do is assign causes. Insee says explicitly that its accounting cannot separate the law's effect from the cycle, and none of the parties has published an analysis that does. Readers following the debate over the 2027 budget can find more on [France's major policy disputes](https://567politics.com/issues/france), and on the [civil-service strike planned for November 17](https://567politics.com/news/france-public-sector-strike-november-17-point-d-indice-freeze-unions-november-2026), where wages and jobs are also at issue.","textStyle":"body","layout":"text"}]}