France got its third piece of terrible economic news in a week

It's been a terrible two days for France's economy.

First, as Mike Bird reported on Thursday, quarterly unemployment rate hit 10.6% according to INSEE, France's statistical agency.

This marks the country's worst joblessness situation for nearly 20 years.

Then we got signs showing that France's services sector is slowing, with its purchasing managers' index (PMIs) for the service industry falling to 51.0 - lower than Italy, Germany, Spain and the Eurozone as a whole.

And on Friday morning, Markit released figures showing November saw France's sharpest retail decline in seven months.

The retail PMI - which surveys sales of 300 retailers - dropped to 47.8 in November, down from 51.9 in the previous month.

According to Markit: "Weak economic conditions, lower customer footfall, a lack of consumer spending power and the impact of the Paris attacks were among the factors cited by panellists as weighing on sales. Sales were well down on an annual basis in November. The year-on-year rate of decline was the sharpest since March."

With the French economy performing worse than many of its Eurozone peers, the pressure will be on European Central Bank President Mario Draghi to ease monetary policy even further.

Here's that unemployment chart. It looks like it's only going one way at the moment - up: