Unemployment in France remained largely unchanged in December from a month earlier but saw a year-on-year growth of 10 percent, official figures showed on Friday.

In December, a total of 3.132 million people in the French mainland were reported to be jobless, the ministry's data showed.

With the overseas departments taken into account, the number of job-seekers inched up by 0.2 percent to 4.917 million compared to data for November, when unemployment rate fell by 0.3 percent for men and grew slightly by 0.4 percent for women.

Earlier in the day, French Labor Minister Michel Sapin stressed that the battle against unemployment needed time to be won, reiterating the government's pledge to overturn the rising unemployment curve by the end of 2013.

According to Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), French unemployment would grow to 9.9 percent in 2012 before falling back to 10.7 percent this year.