French President François Hollande and Prime Minister Manuel Valls have both welcomed July’s unemployment figures, which fell below 10% for the first time since 2012, reports RFI.

Valls said that the unemployment figures are going "in the right direction", after employment agency figures showed a fall of 0.3% to 3.51 million in mainland France.

Both of the leaders claim the drop in unemployment shows that the government’s latest labour and economic policies are working. However trade unions opposed to the government’s labour reforms are sceptical of the effectiveness of the government’s labour policy and point out the increase of temporary and part-time jobs.