François Hollande will have to start bringing the jobless rate down significantly and durably | Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images François Hollande plots narrow path to reelection French president uses payouts, reform tactics to keep his foes guessing.

PARIS — If François Hollande's chances of getting re-elected in 2017 look grim, the Socialist leader is undeterred — and he's laying the groundwork for a bid through a mix of targeted payouts, cautious reform and behind-the-scenes work to undermine potential rivals.

On Wednesday, Hollande's cash-strapped government unveiled more than €2 billion of planned spending on wage hikes in the public sector and financial incentives for young people to accept low-wage jobs.

The payouts appealed directly to the Socialist party's core supporters and acted as a soothing counterpoint to a controversial labor reform bill, which may just pass muster in the streets thanks to a vote of support from a major trade union earlier this week.

At a weekly press briefing, government spokesman Stéphane Le Foll sold the payouts as the start of a "redistribution" phase in Hollande's presidency. "We said with the president of the republic that there was a phase when we would make efforts, and a phase when we would redistribute ... It's a strategy that has been clearly laid out by the president since the start of his presidency."

But Hollande is no longer acting like a sacrificial lamb. Instead, he is clinging to his chances of running for a second term in 2017.

No matter that it remained unclear exactly how the additional spending would be financed, or that France has repeatedly fallen foul of European Commission deficit-reduction targets. Le Foll said the government would not raise taxes to fund the unfreezing of public sector wages, without saying how it would obtain the credits.

The announcement of fresh funds shifted attention away from the government's controversial labor reform plan, two days after Prime Minister Manuel Valls clinched union backing for the bill that made mass protests against it less likely.

While the bill (due to be presented this week to the Council of State for approval) will still offer firms more flexibility to set working hours, the heads of small- and medium-sized firms complained that it had been stripped of several measures tailor-made for them, notably a plan to limit the amount of damages awarded to dismissed workers.

With opposition to the bill divided, Hollande quickly sought to press his advantage with spending measures targeting two of the groups most fiercely opposed to any reform: students and government workers, who plan to go on strike for 15 consecutive days at the end of this month.

"After the disastrous sequence on the labor reform bill, the government is trying by any means to move the spotlight onto another topic," said Yves-Marie Cann, an analyst at pollster Elabe. "There is a huge need to create distractions, to make it look like the government is also putting forward positive ideas."

Still a believer

In the first weeks of 2016, Socialist insiders baffled by Hollande's risky bid on labor reform hinted that the president, dogged by terrible approval ratings, may already have given up on his chances of running for reelection in 2017. In that case the reform would have been his swan song — a serious and concerted effort to modernize the French economy that would have buried him politically.

But Hollande is no longer acting like a sacrificial lamb. Instead, he is clinging to his chances of running for a second term in 2017, despite the odds.

According to advance excerpts of a book about Hollande titled "The Wager," the president acknowledged that his prime minister, Valls, would be the "most legitimate" person to run for the presidency in his place — before dismissing that possibility in the very same phrase.

"Manuel Valls could very well be the candidate if I was not," he told authors Bastien Bonnefous and Charlotte Chaffanjon. "But he may not be the best suited to the situation, because people could say: 'So if François Hollande isn't going, why is it his prime minister?"

A Socialist insider who asked not to be named warned against writing off the "master manipulator" Hollande. The former Socialist party chief was playing off his two main rivals in government — Valls and Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron — against each other, ensuring that neither gained enough momentum to appear as a viable alternative to him for the presidency.

Hollande needs more than payouts to regain the support of left-wing voters.

Macron was forced to fend off accusations of being ineffectual after the labor bill, originally due to be shepherded by his office, was handed over to Labor Minister Myriam El Khomri for fine-tuning. French media noted that most of the measures Macron himself had put forward had been stripped from the bill's final version, leading the 38-year-old minister to say later that he wished the government had "gone further."

Valls is also being kept off-balance. While the prime minister got credit for winning union backing for the bill Monday, Hollande made sure the more popular spending measures were linked to him personally, not the prime minister.

However, after years of high taxes, rampant unemployment and frozen wages for civil servants, Hollande needs more than payouts to regain the support of left-wing voters. For that he will have to start bringing the jobless rate down significantly and durably — a challenge that critics expect him to address by artificially removing people from unemployment registers.

"By nature, it's very unusual for a politician in this country to be able to countenance their own disappearance from the scene," said Cann. "If Hollande dropped out, it would be a first — and a huge surprise."