French Unemployment Surges As Another "Technical Glitch" Crushes Hopes Of Recovery

When France released its August Jobseekers data in August, and it beat expectations dramatically reversing the trend of ongoing malaise with little to no supporting evidence of 'why', we were skeptical. Fast forward one month and we are almost speechless in that not only are European PMIs rolling over just as we warned but the French jobs data is totally screwed up as yet another technical glitch meant 20,000 'text' messages that went unreplied were responsible for the entire improvement. French Labor Minister Michel Sapin is back tracking fast, admitting pre-emptively that "September's data won't be good... due to the 'statistical incident'." The 50k drop last month has been was bettered by a 60k rise to a new record high for French unemployment.