A snapshot of the labour market in 2015 - Unemployment stabilised but there were still many long-term unemployed

In Metropolitan France in 2015, 28.4 million people aged 15 to 64, i.e. 71.5% of this age group, were in the labour force, whether they had a job or were unemployed. Of these, 25.5 million were employed. Three quarters of these occupied members of the labour force worked in the service sector and almost nine out of ten were employees. An open-ended contract was still predominant among employees (85.6%), although young people who had recently entered the labour market less often accessed this type of contract (44.9% for those aged 15-24). Underemployment, affecting women overwhelmingly and particularly unskilled employees, involved 6.6% of the occupied labour force. Among these members of the labour force, there were also 2.9 million unemployed as defined by the International Labour Organisation. The unemployment rate, which stood at 10.0% of the labour force in 2015 (10.4% including the overseas departments) was roughly the same as in 2014 (9.9%). Since 2012, it was higher in men than in women; this difference grew in 2015. More common in young members of the labour force, unemployment lasted longer in older generations: six out of ten unemployed workers aged 50 or over had been unemployed for at least one year. When adding inactive people wanting to work to the unemployed, i.e. falling within the “halo” of unemployment in 2015, 4.3 million people were unemployed and wanted to work.