Journal article: The global performance of the French labour market since the beginning of the great recession is in line with that of previous recent recessions. France's unemployment rate is still far from the historical spike recorded in the mid-1990s. The number of unemployed is comparable to that of the very flexible UK labour market, and is clearly lower when it comes to youth unemployment. Cyclical policies, typical French institutions and recent structural reforms explain this fairly steady trend. The outlook, however, is alarming with a real risk of high unemployment in the long-term. The first two sub-sections attempt to disentangle the impacts of the great recession and the associated cyclical policies on the one hand and the (non-)consequences of Sarkozy's structural reforms on the other. The final section proposes alternative policy packages.