The Centre region’s unemployment rate is below the national average : at the 1st quarter 2011, it stood at 8.4% of the region’s working population (as against 9.2% at national level). The Centre region has one of the lowest unemployment rates in France.

The total number of jobs in the Centre region has been constantly on the increase since the 1990s, with an accelerating development rate since 1996-1997. In 10 years, volume has grown by over 18,000 jobs to reach 605,700 jobs by the end of 2009.

Although there has been a downward trend since 2002 in numbers of establishments in the region envisaging recruitment of new employees, 50,025 recruitment projects were recorded in 2011 (27,136 recruitment projects in 2009).