Paris - French Labour Minister Michel Sapin batted away criticism of the government's record on unemployment on Tuesday, saying France was "within an inch" of turning the corner on joblessness, despite missing a headline target.
On Monday evening, the Labour Ministry released figures showing the number of jobseekers hitting a new record of 3.3 million in December.
The figures were a blow to President Francois Hollande, who had promised to make unemployment start falling by the end of 2013.
Instead, some 177 800 people joined the jobless ranks in the past 12 months, representing a 5.7% year-on-year increase for 2013 over 2012. The unemployment rate in the third quarter of 2013 stood at 10.9%.
The leader of the main opposition Union for a Popular Movement, Jean-Francois Cope, accused the government of "failure" and called on Sapin to resign - a call the latter rejected.
"We didn't reach our objective. The unemployment curve has not been inverted," Sapin acknowledged on France Inter radio.
"We are within an inch of doing so," he said.
Sapin highlighted the government's progress on reducing unemployment among under-25s, which fell 0.3% in 2013, mainly due to state-subsidised youth employment schemes.
What was "missing", he said, were private sector jobs, but the government had a plan to address that.
On January 14 Hollande set out plans to cut employer wage taxes by €30bn by 2017 in return for commitments by bosses on job creation.
The business community has cautiously welcomed the plan, but trade unions have reacted with scepticism, saying the deal offers no iron-clad guarantees on jobs.