French luxury leaders create precious work at home

Paris

USING globalisation's potential with the precision of master designers making fashion, France's luxury companies are generating jobs again, defying nationwide gloom over stubbornly high unemployment.

As they feed the world's growing appetite for the ultimate in chic, the likes of Hermes and Chanel are hiring qualified staff in the hundreds and even thousands, most of them in France itself, a growing contribution to reducing the nation's jobless pool of nearly 3.5 million.