The official Maspétiol Report of 1955, which deeply shocked the French government, revealed that nearly one million Muslims (or one in nine of the overall population) were totally or partially unemployed, and that another two million were seriously underemployed; in the country this meant that the agricultural worker worked no more than an average of sixty-five days a year — or thirty-five days if female labour were included in the reckoning.

QUESTION: The deep unemployment crisis raises questions about what fueled the Algerian independence movement and the structural failures of French colonial economic policy.

Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Alge…, loc. 185