During two years, Natacha shone in her learning. A job in the insurance sector recognized and praised by her colleagues, a personality appreciated in the open space and a rare professional maturity for a student of only 21 years old. Enough to legitimately hope to apply for a CDD or CDI. But the long-awaited contract will never arrive. And for good reason, his dream position is now occupied by a new work-study student. “Apprenticeship is just a pretty name full of promise for a fixed-term contract that pays less and is non-renewable, that’s all,” she complains. “There will always be another student to replace us, so why bother hiring us? There are just too many of us for the system to work. »
Unemployed, she is not the only one to point out the limits of the system. For two years, the Court of Auditors has also been critical of these students working within a company, in exchange for a salary (between 40% and the entire hourly minimum wage) and with, in the vast majority, tuition fees. Free registration. Two reports from the institution – Work-study training, A booming path, funding to be defined, in June 2022, and Refocus public support for vocational training and apprenticeshipsin July 2023, consider professional training too costly, not effective enough, and its beneficiaries too numerous.
“The first year, an apprentice will have no cost for the company”
First complaint therefore, the number. According to a Dares study, there were 837,000 new apprentices in 2022, compared to “only” 300,000 in 2018. The 2022 total is even close to one million (980,000) if we add the work-study students already in place – an apprenticeship can be done on several years. Enough to represent 4% of French employees that year.
This wave stems from the apprenticeship recovery plan that occurred after the first confinement, in 2020. Public aid to businesses – 6,000 euros maximum per year per apprentice – now applies to all students and all entities. Until now, it was reserved for companies with fewer than 250 employees and students preparing for diplomas at a level lower than or equal to the baccalaureate (CAP, BEP, professional baccalaureate).
The Minister of Labor at the time, Muriel Pénicaud, praised during her reform the extreme profitability of apprenticeship on the job market: “The first year, a work-study student aged 20 or less will have no cost – salary and social charges – for the company. Between 21 and 25 years old, the cost will be 175 euros per month, which remains reasonable. » Perhaps too much, in fact. “It’s certain that a free employee for a year, companies would be wrong to deprive themselves,” laughs Bruno Coquet, doctor in economics at the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE) and author of the report Learning: a review of the Roaring Twenties. “Learning has become an addiction. Businesses are happy. The apprentices are happy. The government is happy. But for what consequences? “.
Distortions in the choice of companies
Between 2019 and 2022, 500,000 new apprentice positions were therefore created. And half would simply not have existed without this ultra-financially favorable policy, calculates the doctor in economics: “It’s a pure windfall effect”. Still according to him, the remaining 250,000 took the place of other types of employees. However, it is difficult to conclude that apprenticeship makes the French job market precarious. “The effect is too recent to draw conclusions,” warns Bruno Coquet: “We can very well imagine that these 250,000 positions would have been mostly precarious even without the work-study students.”
To summarize a little roughly, a company makes the following calculation when hiring an employee: the productivity and skills of the candidate divided by their cost. The problem is that subsidized, the apprentice “biases the equation and introduces distortions into this arbitration”, estimates Yannick L’Horty, associate researcher at the Center for Employment Studies (CEE) and professor of economy in Paris-Est.
Apprentices in overly qualified positions?
Sylvain*, 34, works in the banking sector. He swears, he has nothing against apprentices. But it’s difficult for the Nîmes resident not to get angry when it’s a work-study worker who arrives as reinforcement in his overloaded team: “They are not experienced employees and we hire them in positions designed for that. I want to train someone, assist them, we all started somewhere. But don’t call it reinforcement when it’s more up to us to support him than it is up to him to relieve us of the workload. In another branch of the company, the department head is actually an apprentice! »
A case which is not isolated. On Pôle emploi, the search for “Department Manager” only in apprenticeship offers 4,166 offers, 4,902 for “Chef” and 4,199 for “Manager”. This overqualification of apprentice positions results in particular the extension of assistance to Masters profiles. “We no longer hesitate to offer offers corresponding to an experienced profile to work-study students under the pretext that they have Bac + 3 – and almost free. It’s not very professional, but it’s already better than if it was someone with a bachelor’s degree or at Bac level,” recognizes Olivia*, HR in a large cosmetics company.
Even for the trainees themselves, this move upmarket has the aftertaste of a poisoned chalice. Far from the speech of her business school promising a work-study program “where the company trains us and professionalizes us”, Caroline, 23, suffered: “I was seen as an employee, not as a student to be managed. The workload was crazy and did not match my skill level or my salary. I did as many renderings as an incumbent, and I finished even later than permanent workers who had been there for ten years, paid five times more than me. »
Towards job insecurity?
But there is also the “ghost” apprentice. Olivia continues: “We sometimes add work-study students to teams who have not requested reinforcement or help, just because it costs nothing and we tell ourselves that it is a sign of consideration for our troops, or that the team leader will feel more important to have 10 people rather than 9 under his wing. »
A “recognition” not always appreciated. In Aziz’s team, one apprentice succeeds another each year. And the forty-something computer scientist has more than enough of that: “For six months, we have to explain everything to him again in meetings, lingering on his ideas, always off the mark which slows down the whole group, taking him by the hand and guide him on a lot of subjects. The apprentice is often more of a burden than a help to the team. A meeting with or without a work-study worker means 25% more time.”
What is the cost of alternation?
Last criticism, we talked about it at the beginning: the cost. In a context where the government continues to talk about the end of magic money and the need to reduce public spending, the amount invested each year – 16.8 billion euros in 2022, according to the Court of Auditors, i.e. almost half of the tariff shield – raises questions.
A work-study student costs the State on average 25,000 euros per year, compared to 11,000 for a higher education student. And the results do not follow the allocated budget. The Court of Auditors, this time in its June 2022 report, noted a “weak or even zero effect” for accessibility to first employment for apprentices coming from higher education. Even in the medium term, “the effect is limited. Professional bachelor’s and master’s degree graduates (excluding master’s degrees in teaching) who obtained their diploma through work-study training benefit from thirty-month integration rates 4 to 5 points higher than those of graduates with student status. , notes the institution. Or 96% versus 91%.
More and more qualified apprentices for a less and less visible effect
For apprentices in BEP or CAP, the effects are more visible. “Registered apprentices took on average 7.6 months to obtain this first job, compared to 11 months for students with educational status. This added value is maintained over time. For holders of a CAP or BEP, three years after obtaining the diploma, former apprentices worked on average 2.16 months more than former high school students,” estimates the report.
But with the universalization of public aid, more and more work-study students (60%) come from higher education. Yannick L’Horty recognizes this: “There is real doubt about the benefit of financing so much learning at master’s level.” Especially since the older apprentice is more expensive for public finances: +17% per head.
Are billions starting to get expensive? “The effect on employment is not commensurate with the investments,” says Bruno Coquet soberly. “Or we decide on a massive public policy and we put 25,000 euros per head for students, but I think we can hope for better results. »