Canada features at job fair for France's unemployed professionals

It goes without saying that unemployment is one of the major issues currently facing the French government.

The country's president, François Hollande, made tackling the problem one of his priorities, making endless promises during his first year in office that the upward trend would be reversed by the end of 2013.

It wasn't.

In January 2014, he admitted having failed, changed tack and maintained that his Pacte de Responsabilité (Responsibility Pact - agreed with trade unions and employers' organisations and which would give business increased tax breaks) would "put the French economy back on the rails".

The assumption being that a drop in the unemployment rate would be one of the results.

He went even further later in the year, when he started talking about not seeking re-election in 2017 if the effects of his economic policies didn't kick in and he failed to cut unemployment.

Well, the jobless rate is still on the rise.

The most recent seasonally adjusted figures for Q3 2014 released by the Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques (the French National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies, INSEE) had risen to 10.4 per cent.

Without blinding you with an endless stream of figures and percentages (you can find plenty of reports on the stats by doing a simple Internet search) the bottom line is that France is still in deep economic doggy doo (now isn't that a profound analysis) .

Help is at hand though - at least for young professionals who are having problems finding the job to suit their qualifications or those who are looking to change their career, retrain or start their own businesses.

It comes in the form of the Salon du travail et de la mobilité professionnelle - a job fair organised by the weekly news magazine L'Express and with the official backing of the ministry of employment.

It's being held at the Grande Halle de la Villette in Paris on January 23 and 24, bringing together 150 exhibitors, workshops and consultants with those looking for jobs.

Among the advice given on how best to present yourself and your cv, and in spite of the special section for the handicapped, the whole shebang seems to be put a weird perspective by two factors.

Firstly, one of the posters promoting the fair suggests "mobility" - trying another region within France.

Fair enough. It might smack somewhat of the advice given back in the 1980s to Britain's unemployed by the former conservative employment (among other positions) minister Norman Tebbit to "get on their bikes".

Or go where the work is. But it's probably healthy to remind visitors and jobseekers that France doesn't begin and end in Paris.

Secondly there's  the "country of honour"  - Canada - and the poster declaring the low unemployment rate the other side of the Atlantic in Quebec.

(screenshot Salon du travail et de la mobilité professionnelle poster)

Does that mean the French government has in a roundabout way, (because it's supporting the fair) come up with a new strategy to reduce unemployment in France by encouraging people  to look anywhere - even abroad - for opportunities?

Any ideas François Rebsamen (the minister of employment)?

How serious is François Hollande about (maybe) not standing for re-election in 2017?

"When the going gets tough, the tough get going," runs the cliché.

And if you just happen to be the French president, François Hollande, it provides an opportunity to throw in the proverbial towel a few years in advance - just in case.

Hollande's statement last week that he might not run for a second term in office in 2017 if he didn't succeed in lowering unemployment in France must have gasted a flabber or two because it was hardly a sentiment you would expect from someone holding the highest office in the land.

“If unemployment doesn’t improve between now and 2017, I have no reason to be candidate and no chance of being re-elected,” Hollande said during a visit to  Michelin's Ladoux research and development site just north of the company's headquarters in the town of Clermont-Ferrand.

And he added - just as he has for the past couple of years - that all the government's energy would be put into fighting unemployment because, "the challenge was the most important one the country faced."

François Hollande during a visit to Michelin (screenshot France 3 report)

Well at least Hollande was being consistent as it's a pledge the French have heard repeatedly ever since he took office in May 2012.

Every month, the (now former) employment minister, Michel Sapin, massaged and reinterpreted the figures to show that while unemployment was on the increase, the rate at which it was rising had slowed down - or so he wanted everyone to believe.

Doubtless, now that Sapin has been moved to the finance ministry, his successor François Rebsamen will (be forced to) do the same.

Meanwhile Hollande, who had promised an absolute decrease by the end of 2013, stuck his head in the sand in true ostrich style and continued repeating his Méthode Coué mantra that unemployment would drop before finally admitting (well he had little choice in the end) that he had failed to reach his objective in one year.

Clearly not one to learn from his mistakes, Hollande has now extended the deadline by another three years and all the time, once again staking his political future on the same objective.

So is it really time for the Socialist party to begin looking around for another potential candidate for 2017 allowing the political manœuvring to gather steam (not that politicians need much encouragement).

Is it simply Hollande blustering and preparing the country for another three years of rising unemployment?

Perhaps it's potential political suicide as some pundits have suggested, should Hollande not be able to pull it off.

Or maybe his apparent commitment is a courageous, but at the same time foolhardy, one.

It's probably anybody's guess - even among those who profess to understand how (French) politics works.

There again, Hollande's definition of what might eventually constitute a turnaround could remain as vague as much of his policy direction has during his (almost) two years in office.

One thing's for sure. Hollande's statement is hardly one which inspires confidence and it surely just adds weight to the belief by many, even within his party, that the cause for the bad showing in the recent local elections was not so much the former government's policies but...Hollande and his style of "non leadership".