The population less subject to these questions is the 25-54, hence I usually try to look for statistics on this population when I'm to evaluate some kind of "health" of the economy. And sometimes just male, since as shown below 25-54 female employment rate is rapidly changing.

Pink in France, blue is UK, data from eurostat online database.

Male 25-54 employment rate:

Female 25-54 employment rate:

Total 25-54 employment rate:

15-64 part time workers rate amongst workers:

(only stat available on part time on the OECD site, I'd liked to get the 25-54 rate as well)

The male situation was bad in the UK in 1992, so beware of article showing only progress on the last ten years while ignoring starting positions :).

25-54 male employment rate is more or less stable in France, moving in the 86-88 range. UK is above in recent years, I don't know if 88 is some kind of limit ("real" inactive people and transition from work to work).

25-64 female is going up 0.5/year, France is around 2 below UK (don't know how child bearing is counted). On a continued trend it would take more than 20 years to reach the male rate.

The part time rate difference is not negligible (10 points and stable), interpolating the stupid way (2 part time = one full time) it would make around 4-5 point difference in employment rates (unless all of it is concentrated in the 15-24 population).

Some detailed UK statistics here. I'd love to find something similar in France, especially number of public vs private creations and self-employed in France.

Your analysis?