Spain's new government announced Friday that it would cut employees' maximum severance pay from 45 days to 33 days' salary for each year of employment. Employment Minister Fatima Banez said the goal was to stem unemployment.
Renault boss Carlos Ghosn and Morocco's King Mohammed VI opened the carmaker's new factory near Tangiers on Thursday with great ceremony. The plant will have an initial capacity of 170,000 vehicles, expected eventually to reach 400,000. Yet the partly state-owned Renault has faced a storm of criticism over the project, seen by some in France as denying French workers jobs that were rightfully theirs.
The US jobless rate dropped to a three-year low of 8.3 percent and the economy created 243,000 jobs in January, marking the fastest employment growth in nine months, the Labor Department said Friday.
During a TV appearance on Sunday night, President Sarkozy showed off a perhaps new-found love - for France's economically stronger neighbour Germany. Next, we meet the lingerie factory workers fighting to keep their jobs. Their plight is becoming a rallying point against industrial decline for politicians on both left and right. Finally, we take a look at the bitingly satirical comic books that are proving hugely popular in France.
Unemployment in the 17-nation eurozone has risen to its highest level ever, hitting 10.4% in December, Eurostat data showed on Tuesday. It is the highest jobless rate recorded since June 1998, before the single currency was introduced in 1999.
Even if it was off the record, you know it’s not going well for the incumbent when he starts contemplating life after the presidency. François Picard’s panel looks at why Nicolas Sarkozy finds himself 20 percentage points down in the polls.
Far-left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon (pictured) battles the far-right for the working-class vote. Meanwhile, Socialist hopeful François Hollande has rolled out his manifesto, but does it prove he's got the stature to be the next president? And with jobless numbers rising, we meet a woman who works at a French job centre.
Unemployment in Spain shot up to 22.8 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011, the National Statistics Institute reported Friday. Spain is the eurozone country worst hit by joblessness, with 5.3 million people out of work at the end of December.
French government figures show the number of jobseekers in France rose by 29,700 in December to reach 2.87 million, the highest level since 1999, in further bad news for President Nicolas Sarkozy ahead of elections in the spring.
The French papers are consumed with more grim economic news. Alongside climbing unemployment levels, Libération reports that the last factory of a major lingerie manufacturer is to be closed. But Les Echos say the French can be consoled: even as companies like Kodak face bankruptcy in the US, other businesses emerge. And in extra-terrestrial news, a piece of Mars lands - on Earth.
