Services at arms length hold job creation in France – Le Figaro

GRAPHICS – For the fifth consecutive quarter, the French economy has created more jobs than it has destroyed. But the momentum seems to be over and the main driver of the private sector, the service sector, too.

The French no longer know which way dance. One day, bad news, another, good. Tuesday, the Institute of Statistics (INSEE) showed that industrial production had again sharply in France, which is not a good omen for employment. Friday, INSEE announced that parallel, and for the fifth consecutive quarter, the French economy continued to create jobs: 24,100 new jobs in the second quarter. In one year, the number of births totaled 143,300. In total, over 16 million people occupy a market sector. Not seen since the beginning of 2012

The good news glad the Minister of Labour Myriam El Khomri who was content to broadcast without comment more than that.

I must say it is against the tide of rising unemployment and stagnant growth.

the explanation is simple and shows that both statistical series published (production and employment) this week are not at all inconsistent. Between April and June, only the service sector hired more than licensee (37,800 excluding temporary). But these creations in the service enough to more than offset the further destruction in industry (-9,700, -0.3%) and in construction (-3,500, -0.3%), lasting two affected areas. Factories have lost nearly a million jobs since the second quarter of 2001, the yards around 200,000 since the end of 2008.

Main locomotive private employment, the service sector has been growing steadily since end 2014. in just under two years, he has created nearly 300,000 jobs (229,000 excluding temporary) when the industry was destroyed, over the same period, about 62,000.

But since the end of last year, this dynamic seems to be over as the industry job cuts continue to grow. Blame the repeated strikes in transport but also to attacks in recent months in France and penalizing the tourism sector. Which is why the balance of 24,100 is certainly again positive but significantly lower than in the first two quarters (+ 47,100 in the fourth quarter 2015 and 37 300 in the first quarter of this year).