French unemployment rate hits 37-year low in Q2 2020 as lockdown bites

French unemployment fell to a 37-year low in the second quarter, as a multi-year downtrend was exaggerated by a coronavirus lockdown that meant people couldn't look for work, data from statistics agency INSEE showed on Thursday.

The jobless rate fell to 7.1%, from 7.8% in the first quarter, dropping to its lowest since the second quarter of 1983, when it stood at 7.0%.

INSEE warned that unemployment data for the first two quarters of 2020 was skewed because of the mid-March to mid-May lockdown, which reduced the number of those classified as unemployed by making it impossible for them to