But INSEE called the decline "a trick of the eye," because it "did not reflect an improvement in the labor market, but rather a lockdown effect."
For the April-June period, the number of unemployed people decreased by 271,000 to 2.0 million. "This sharp fall in unemployment while the employment is declining is inherent to the definition of unemployment," said INSEE.
In the definition by the International Labor Organization (ILO), an unemployed person must have been actively looking for work in the last four weeks or have found a job starting within three months.
"In Q2 2020, the drop in the unemployment rate resulted from a sharp fall in the number of jobless persons declaring themselves actively looking for work during the period of lockdown. The confinement period indeed strongly affected active job search behavior during the first part of the quarter," explained INSEE.
In the absence of confinement, the joblessness rate would have been virtually stable at 8.2 percent, according to the statistics agency.
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