French unemployment figures will stay bad for some months to come but improved economic growth prospects mean more jobs will be created later this year, Prime Minister Mr Jean-Pierre Raffarin said this morning.
Economic reforms being introduced now should reduce unemployment even further over the next two years, he told Europe 1radio in an interview.
France's unemployment rate is 9.8 per cent and the statistics office INSEE says it will be at that level at the end of this year.
INSEE last week raised 2004 growth projections to 2.3 per cent from the government's forecast of 1.7 per cent but said the unemployment rate was likely to rise a bit further before the impact of growth started to kick in.
"There is a real upturn," Mr Raffarin said as France prepared for a day of protests from electricity and gas workers while the National Assembly debates his plan to partly privatise their utilities Electricite de France and Gaz de France.
"We'll have some bad unemployment figures for a few months, but in the second half of the year, growth will create more jobs," he said.
Mr Raffarin said his reform programme should bring a further drop in unemployment over the next two years: "In 2006, we'll see a real drop in unemployment."