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The number of jobless people in France rose by nearly 40,000 (1.2%) in April, to hit an all-time high. The increase took the number of registered jobseekers in mainland France to 3,264,400, the worst since records began in 1996, marking two uninterrupted years of monthly rises, official figures revealed.

Looking at the last five years, it was the 53rd month out of 61 showing a rise, highlighting France's chronic job crisis as the economy fell back into recession in the first quarter and jobless figures were driven up by industrial layoffs.

The new record is a blow to President François Hollande, who is sticking to a pledge to reverse the unemployment trend by the end of the year, despite multiple forecasts to the contrary.

The UK labor market has done much better than expected since the start of the recession. Although we are suffering the worst recovery for over a century – national income has shrunk by almost 3% since 2008 – jobs have held up. Professor John Van Reenen explains that the main reason for this paradox is that real wages have collapsed, allowing firms to enjoy cheaper labor despite low demand for their goods and services. More jobs than ever before?  The headline claim that ‘there are more people in work today than before the economic crisis started’ is true but it is also profoundly misleading. Employment has risen a little – from 29.5 million in 2007 to 29.7 million up to the release of the jobs figures – but the adult population has also risen. This means that the proportion of people over 16 who are in work, the employment rate, has actually fallen from 73.1% at the end of 2007 to 71.4% in 2013. What’s more, there is evidence of underemployment as there has been a big rise in the proportion of part-timers, temporary workers and ‘zero-hours’ contracts. Even more striking is the boom in the number of people who would like to work more hours at their current wage rates, but cannot get the extra work. Although the unemployment rate rose from 5.2% at the end of 2007 to 7.8%, estimates of the underemployment rate rose from 6.8% to 10.5%.