I really didn’t think France could pull this off. Really, I didn’t.
No, the Gallic country has long suffered from high taxes and strict labor market policies that make it almost impossible for many employers to hire and fire. It also has an incredibly small pool of young people who are working, and so needs to import workers from other countries.
But all that is changing.
France’s national unemployment rate, which was at almost 10 percent in early 2012, now sits at 4.4 percent.
That figure is still significantly higher than the eurozone average of 2.7 percent, but the primary reason France’s unemployment is so low is growth.
As I said before, the jobless rate in the eurozone as a whole has fallen from 9.1 percent to 4.7 percent since the same period.
But in France, the unemployment rate fell from 10.7 percent to 6.4 percent in that same period.
In 2015, the economy grew by just under 3 percent — a very strong performance for a European country, but still far less than the European average.
And last year, the French economy grew by 1.8 percent.
This year, it’s projected to grow at a rate of close to 2 percent.
This last year alone, the French economy has added more than 150,000 jobs.
Again, with a small pool of workers, the French economy simply can’t get enough young people to work. But this year, the situation is so different — the jobs market has risen faster than the economy — that the new workers are mostly students or recent retirees — and they are well educated.
Real GDP for France is up significantly more this year than the eurozone as a whole.
Despite the fact that it is heavily reliant on aging workers, France’s employment rate, which remains well below the national average, is markedly higher than elsewhere in the eurozone.
Think of it as a quiet revolution that’s happening without the benefit of all the social problems that a factory town would probably face.
The French economy’s big exports have been to the United States and China, where it accounts for close to 7 percent of its exports. France, for the most part, has a low-wage manufacturing sector. But it has done well with its exports of advanced, knowledge-based products to where workers are willing to pay more.
That is one reason the super-low unemployment rate for France is comparable to that of Germany.
France’s labor-market reforms are also increasing female participation in the workforce, as the former cedes the latter’s traditional role to its female workers.
And it may be the reason why the old dictator of France, who ordered polygamy outlawed, is now the favorite to win the upcoming presidential election.