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« OWe want there to be more French people working, because that helps increase revenue. We receive more taxes and contributions. » The Prime Minister found a new pretext to justify a reduction in the rights of job seekers: the recovery of public accounts, after the announcement last Tuesday by INSEE of a slippage in the budget deficit of nearly 16 billion euros. For the occasion, the Prime Minister makes a new argument during his appearance on TF1’s 8 p.m. show on March 27. This time it’s no longer the oft-repeated fib of unemployment paying more than work. From now on, the storytelling consists of asserting that to achieve full employment, that is to say an unemployment rate below 5%, it would be necessary further tighten unemployment insurance rules to “encourage people to return to work”. More people in employment means more taxes and contributions which will increase state revenue and reduce the deficit.
This demonstration is fallacious, but is nevertheless based on a bit of truth. Indeed, more people in employment is synonymous with additional tax and social revenue. But jobs still need to be available in sufficient numbers. And this is where Gabriel Attal’s reasoning begins to take on water. Although, for two years, the executive has dramatized and amplified the recruitment difficulties encountered in certain sectors of activity, the offers of unfilled positions would not be able to lead to full employment if they found a buyer. To achieve this objective, nearly a million people registered in category A of Pôle emploi would need to find work.
Does reducing unemployment insurance create jobs?
The discourse on encouraging people to return to work by reducing unemployment benefits clashes with a reality: the absence of jobs available in sufficient numbers to allow the unemployed to find work. This situation is not expected to change. On the contrary, at the start of his intervention on TF1 last week, Gabriel Attal explained the poor budget deficit figures by “a European economic slowdown”. A slowdown synonymous with a drop in the number of job creations. Worse, this deterioration in the economic situation should increase the number of job seekers. According to macroeconomic forecasts from the Banque de France dated September 2023, “the unemployment rate, which rose to 7.2% in the second quarter of 2023, would gradually increase to reach 7.8% at the end of 2025”.
This gloomy economic context has no connection with the supposed behavior of job seekers who avoid work.“Reducing unemployment insurance rights does not create jobs. Some people will perhaps return to work more quickly, but in degraded conditions, by accepting the first offer that comes.”explained in the columns of New Obs the economist Bruno Coquet. For the researcher associated with the French Observatory of Economic Conditions, “Faced with two candidates, the recruiter will take the most qualified for a position that could have been occupied by someone who was less qualified. The latter will therefore not come out of unemployment. So it’s only the queue that changes. »
There is therefore no mechanical and massive effect between the reduction of the rights of the unemployed and the resumption of employment. And this, especially since only 36% of people registered with Pôle emploi, now France Travail, receive compensation. This rate collapsed after the entry into force of previous unemployment insurance reforms. “We don’t have proof that it works or doesn’t work. We can admit that this will put people into employment who would not otherwise have been employed, but what is certain is that it will not work for everyone. People who don’t have solutions will find themselves impoverished”explained Michael Zemmour to Balance of power last month.
To justify this further weakening of unemployment insurance, the executive will undoubtedly try to rely on several studies carried out in Europe and the United States, cited in the interim report of the insurance reform evaluation committee. unemployment. These estimate that an extension of the duration of compensation reduces the return to employment, but in very modest proportions. The resumption of employment due to shorter compensation is very largely in degraded and precarious jobs, which will then send people back into unemployment. Even in the presidential majority, the pill does not work for everyone. Thus, Sacha Houlié, the president of the law committee at the National Assembly and Renaissance deputy for Vienne, estimated this weekend on the set of the RTL Grand Jury, that a reduction in rights was “more of a savings measure than a return to work measure”.
One truly vacant job for sixteen unemployed people
What does it matter to the government. To create a diversion, he regularly highlights the increase in the number of so-called vacant jobs, which he compares to the unemployment rate. Thus, it suggests that the unemployed are not making enough effort and would voluntarily remain unemployed. But what is it really?
In the fourth quarter of 2023, these so-called vacant jobs numbered 347,500 in companies with ten or more employees, for 15.56 million jobs occupied, according to the Directorate for the Animation of Research, Studies and Statistics (Dares) of the Ministry of Labor. These “vacant” jobs had increased very sharply after the Covid-19 pandemic, but have been declining for a year, with almost 50,000 fewer “vacant” jobs compared to the same quarter of 2022. Among these almost 350,000 so-called vacant jobs , barely more than half are actually unoccupied jobs, awaiting candidates. The others are newly created jobs (26% of so-called vacant jobs) – which have not yet found takers – or jobs still occupied and about to become available (21%). Which somewhat reduces the volume of jobs actually available.
Vacant jobs are thus much fewer than job seekers: 5.1 million people were, at the end of 2023, registered with Pôle emploi, now France Travail, and required to look for work (categories A, B and C) in Metropolitan France. Among them, 2.8 million had not worked at all (category A) and 2.3 million had carried out reduced activity. There are therefore eight times more unemployed people in category A than so-called vacant jobs. And if we only take into account the jobs that are actually available, there is one position for every sixteen unemployed people.
The real obstacles to employment: access to housing and low wages
It is therefore mathematically obvious that filling vacant jobs will not resolve the unemployment issue. However, is the government right to blame job seekers for their large numbers? The answer is clearly no, if it is a question of pointing out an absence of desire to work among the unemployed, as the government demagogically suggests.
“Recruitment difficulties come firstly from a skills gap linked to the needs of companies, but also from the working conditions offered. It is the subjects of low salaries, staggered hours, short contracts, difficult access to transport and housing which are at the origin of recruitment difficulties”, analyzed the CFDT at the time of the announcement, in November 2022, of the reform targeting the duration of compensation, which already used the argument of too many vacant jobs. This analysis of the causes of recruitment difficulties is corroborated by a study by the statistical service of the Ministry of Labor(Dares).
The tension on the labor market is then caused by something other than too much passivity on the part of job seekers. First cause in several sectors of activity: the intensity of hiring and a shortage of available labor. All accompanied by training challenges, particularly for qualified workers and technicians in industry, care professions or even those in telecommunications and IT. Added to this are geographical obstacles to matching employment areas and the territorial distribution of the workforce. With the consequence of housing or transport issues which limit the return to employment. For example, a potential caregiver or childminder candidate for a position in Paris or the inner suburbs will have great difficulty finding accommodation not too far from her place of work and financially accessible.
In addition to all these obstacles, that of the quality of the jobs offered is not negligible. “Conversely, for waiters in cafes and restaurants, the requirement for specific training is less and more job seekers are available. However, the working conditions and the non-sustainability of employment are less favorable”, notes Dares. The catering sector often combines short contracts, part-time work, split hours and low pay. “Being paid the minimum wage in seaside resorts, when it costs a minimum wage to find accommodation, obviously people don’t go there! » clearly recalls Denis Gravouil, the CGT negotiator for the unemployment insurance issue.
With the hypothesis expressed by Gabriel Attal of reducing the duration of compensation to twelve months, the executive will push the unemployed to accept any job, no matter how degraded it may be. But that is perhaps the objective, in addition to making budgetary savings. And those who, many of them, will not find so-called vacant jobs risk falling into poverty.
Stéphane Ortega / Balance of power
Photo: Xose Bouzas / Hans Lucas
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