These country notes provide an overview of the labour market situation in each country based on data from OECD Employment Outlook 2025. This edition has a special focus on how population and workforce ageing will affect the labour market and workers’ jobs.

The OECD unemployment rate remains at 4.9% in May 2025 – the same as one year ago. However, there are signs of weakening, with employment growth decelerating and labour market tightness falling back to pre?COVID?19 levels in many countries.

• In France, the unemployment rate has remained stable at around 7.3?7.4% over the past year, until April-May 2025, when it declined to 7.1%. This remains at a historically low level, but still 2.2?percentage points above the OECD unemployment rate. At 69.3% in Q1?2025, the employment rate among the working age population reached a record high, 0.6?percentage point higher than a year earlier. However, this rate remains below the OECD average of 72.1%.

• According to OECD projections, GDP growth is set to slow from 1.1% in 2023?24 to 0.6% in 2025 due to heightened economic policy uncertainty, before gradually recovering to 0.9% in 2026. As a result, the unemployment rate is expected to rise to 7.8% by the end of 2025, before falling back to 7.4% by the end of 2026.

• Labour market tightness has returned to pre?COVID?19 levels in many OECD?countries, as has the efficiency of matching between employers and jobseekers. But labour markets remain tight for a number of structural reasons. In France, labour market tightness (measured by the number of vacancies per unemployed person) remained 22% above pre crisis levels.

• In April?2025, France introduced a new reform of its unemployment benefit system, which concerns notably older jobseekers. The age threshold for benefiting from a 25% (respectively 20%) extension of the potential benefit duration was raised from 53 to 55 (respectively 55 to 57), while the threshold for exemption from the 30% benefit reduction after seven?months of unemployment was lowered from 57 to 55. Besides, the minimum age at which benefit duration can be extended until the jobseeker becomes eligible to full pension has been raised from 62 to 64. This is consistent with the recent pension reform which increased the legal retirement age, i.e.?the minimum age at which individuals are eligible to claim their pension, to 64.

Real wages are growing in virtually all OECD?countries, but in half of them, they are still below the levels of early 2021 – just before the inflation surge that followed the pandemic.

• Real wages in France have almost caught up with their early 2021 levels – they were only 1% lower in Q1?2025 than in Q1?2021 (see figure below). Real wages in France did not fall much during the inflation surge, as was the case in many neighbouring countries (e.g.?Belgium, Germany, Italy and Spain), thanks to relatively contained inflation rates and dynamic wage re?negotiations. However, at 0.7%, real wage growth remains weak on an annual basis – the average growth rate among the 37?OECD?countries for which data are available is 2.5%.

• The automatic indexation of the French national minimum wage (SMIC) helped safeguarding the purchasing power of the low-paid: the real minimum wage was 0.6% higher in April?2025 than in January?2021. This can be linked to the substantial compression of the wage distribution at the bottom since the COVID?19 crisis. The minimum wage in France represents 62% of the median wage, one of the highest levels across the OECD.

People around the world are living longer and healthier lives than ever before. This remarkable achievement has been accompanied by declining fertility, leading to significant demographic shifts. The number of old-age people per working-age person will rise by 67% by 2060 across the OECD. The share of people employed in the population will fall unless policies change, slowing down annual GDP per capita growth by 0.4?percentage points.

• For France, the employment to population ratio will decrease by 2.08?percentage points. Assuming productivity growth remains constant – at the level of the 2006?19 period – this implies that GDP per capita will grow at an annual rate of 0.48%, compared with 0.72% for the 2006?19 period. Over the same period, according to the baseline projection forecasts, the number of old-age dependents per working-age individual will increase from 0.39 to 0.52 between 2023 and 2060.

Getting more jobs for older workers and promoting gender equality at work could stabilise employment-to-population ratios in most OECD?countries. However, GDP per capita growth will still slow in many countries. In addition to mobilising the untapped talent pool, it will also be important to boost productivity growth to sustain growth level close to past levels.

• By mobilizing untapped labour resources – closing the gender gap in employment by two?thirds and, importantly, activating older workers in good health as well as promoting regular migration – France can increase annual GDP per capita growth to 0.86%, becoming close to the 1.04% average growth rate observed in the OECD during the 2006?19 period (see figure below). France may increase economic growth beyond this benchmark – to 1.28% – if, in addition, productivity growth reaches half of the 1991?2000 OECD cross-country median. Thus, France can effectively limit the drag on growth brought by the demographic transition.

Employment of both men and women drops sharply after age?60 in most countries. Promoting lifelong learning, healthy workplaces, flexible retirement, and inclusive employer practices is essential to boost older workers’ employability and extend working lives.

• Employment rates for late career workers have risen significantly across OECD?countries over the past two decades (2000?24). In France, following successive pension reforms, employment rates increased by 28.9?percentage points for those aged?55?59, more than twice the OECD average (14.1?percentage points), and by 31.9?percentage points for those aged?60?64 (against 21.1?percentage points on average in the OECD). Nonetheless, at 42.4% in 2024, the employment rate at age?60?64 remains well below the OECD average (55.9%) (see figure below).

• Pension reforms need to be accompanied by efforts to boost labour demand and ensure workers remain employable throughout their lives including in late career. In many countries the average age of labour market exit remains below that of the normal retirement age. This is particularly the case in France where there is a gap of 2.6?years for women, and 4.1?years for men. Opportunities to combine work and pension income can facilitate a gradual retirement. However, the share of older workers who continue working on receipt of a pension is relatively low across OECD?countries with available data. In France only 10.9% of workers aged?50?69 continue working on first receipt of a pension, more than twice as low as the average of 22.4% among 24 European OECD?countries.

• In 2023, France enacted a significant pension reform that gradually raises the legal retirement age, i.e.?the minimum age at which individuals are eligible to claim their pension, from 62 to 64 by 2030 and accelerates the transition to the full pension requirement of 43?years of contributions, from 2035 to 2027. A new bill discussed in parliament, based on the national agreement among social partners, plan to ease access to partial retirement, starting 4?years before the age of full pension, compared to 2?years at the moment.

• Adult learning in France is particularly low among older workers. In 2022, 21.7% of workers aged?55?65 participated in non-formal learning, around half as many as for those aged?25?54 (40.6%).