A decade of middling growth and persistently high unemployment

Banque de France Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau, reflecting on the fifteen years since 2010, has described French economic performance over that stretch as 'intermediate,' with annual growth averaging around 1.1%, close to the euro-area average of 1.2% but well below the roughly 2.3% recorded in the United States over the same period. Villeroy, who became governor in 2015, has characterized the years following the 2009 global financial crisis as initially 'chaotic and negative,' as the crisis mutated into a eurozone sovereign-debt crisis that left several heavily indebted member states at risk of losing capital-market access and the euro area itself at risk of fragmenting. French unemployment, which the Banque de France notes had not fallen below 7% at any point since 1983, remained a persistent drag on the economy through much of the 2010s even as the rate gradually improved later in the decade, including gains in employment among older workers, though it stayed below the broader European average for most of the period. The governor has pointed to this stretch as formative for his own emphasis on structural reform and labor-market flexibility as preconditions for lifting France's medium-term growth trajectory.