France's monthly joblessness down 1.7 pct in March

The French unemployment rate in March decreased by 1.7 percent from February data, reaching a record low since 2006, the country's labor ministry said Tuesday.

Already in torrid struggle to honor promise to create jobs, the government numbered less 60,000 jobless people, making the total number of jobseekers at 3.531 million in France mainland.

On a yearly basis, however, unemployment rose by 0.5 percent.

At the end of March, jobless claims of youth, which represents a large slice of the country's total jobseekers, was down by 1.7 percent from February while that of old unemployed people decreased by 1 percent, according to the ministry figures.

With 30-billion-euro (33.85 billion U.S. dollars) cut in payroll charges and by pumping millions of euros to finance job contracts for poorly-skilled young people without work, the government targets to encourage investment and recruitments to number less than 3 millions of jobless people by the end of 2017.

In a recent economic report, national statistics institute, Insee forecasted joblessness trend in France mainland and overseas departments to slow to 10.4 percent by mid 2016, on expected strong growth rate, compared to 10.6 percent currently. (1 euro = 1.128 U.S. dollars) Enditem