Obama: We Should Be more like France

President Obama held up France as the gold standard the U.S. workplace should emulate during an event at the White House on Monday.

Extolling the business virtues of helping workers balance family and employment demands, including providing paid time off for the birth of a child, Obama said that if France can provide the benefits, so can the United States.

“Other countries know how to do this,” Obama said. “If France can figure this out, we can figure it out.”

France provides some of the most far-reaching worker rights in the developed world, including limiting a standard work week at 35 hours and providing 16 weeks of paid maternity leave.

France also has an unemployment rate that has hovered above 10 percent for more than two years, well above the rate of unemployed in the United Kingdom and the United States, which are both in the 6 percent range.

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French unemployment at record high ..11.1%

In December, 10,200 more people were listed as jobless, breaking President Francois Hollande's promise joblessness would fall by the year end. 

The French unemployment rate is now 11.1%. It went up by 5.7% in 2013, and rose 0.3% in December.

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