In the medical field, we could almost speak of therapeutic relentlessness. This Wednesday, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal indicated that he was looking into a tightening of unemployment insurance, which would make it the third reform in five years. 2019, 2023, 2024, this trinity is based on the same argument. Unemployment benefits would still be far too generous, explaining certain recruitment difficulties. Unsustainable in the eyes of the government which has made full employment one of its objectives.
A fixed idea, toughening conditions for the unemployed to promote jobs, even if it means saying everything and its opposite in the reforms. That of 2019, effective in 2021, notably reduced the amount of unemployment benefits but “in return” presented an extension of time – the theoretical duration of compensation increasing from eleven to fourteen months on average. Duration of compensation which will ultimately be reduced by 25% by the 2023 reform, in the event of “favorable” economic conditions (unemployment of less than 8%, as is currently the case, and which does not rise too quickly).
Blatant lack of diagnosis
The opportunity for another misunderstanding. The 2023 reform works according to the following principle: the better the economic situation, the lower unemployment, the harsher the benefit conditions. Thus, the duration of compensation would drop from 40% in the event of unemployment to less than 6%. A year later, Gabriel Attal justifies the next tightening by… bad economic conditions.
In addition to justifying everything and its opposite, this postulate of unemployed people who are too brooding and who will go to work in the event of harsher conditions is not based on any serious data. “In the absence of a diagnosis worthy of the name, the new cuts in rights are based on arguments from authority,” says Bruno Coquet, doctor in economics and president of Uno Etudes & Conseil, a consultancy and consultancy firm. expertise on employment and public policies. The results of the last two reforms are difficult to establish, which does not prevent the government from wanting to make a third with the same sauce. First, the reforms are too recent to know their impact. Then, the effect on employment is difficult to measure.
“Insurance is only one determinant among many others in the evolution of unemployment,” recalls Yannick L’Horty, associate researcher at the Center for Employment Studies (CEE) and professor of economics. “Unemployment depends above all on macroeconomic activity, labor costs, hiring and firing costs, training, etc. » After a continuous decline over several years, the number of unemployed has been increasing since the summer of 2023, but “this says little about the effectiveness of the reforms”, indicates the professor.
A solution to vacant jobs, really?
As for the famous vacant jobs, their rate increased from 2.5% to 2.2% between the last quarter of 2022 and 2023, according to Dares. “The first elements of the Dares suggest that the return to employment would be faster with the 2019-2021 regulations, but on shorter and lower quality jobs, with confinement to short contracts”, nuance Claire Vives, sociologist at the Center for Employment and Labor Studies. “Contrary to the idea that a bad job would be a stepping stone to a good job, the results instead show that people who have a short, poorly paid job fail to find a better job.”
The sociologist drives the point home. The rhetoric of unemployment to be toughened because it is currently too remunerative to encourage work does not hold when “half of the unemployed are not compensated by Unedic and do not fill these available jobs either. It is therefore not consistent to attribute these recruitment difficulties to the supposed generosity of the compensation rules.” Finally, remember that Dares estimates the number of vacant jobs at 350,000 in 2023, compared to around 3 million unemployed throughout the year.
A well-quantified impoverishment
“The only certain effect for the 2019-2021 reform is that it has impoverished unemployed people, either by reducing their benefits or by excluding them from it,” adds Michaël Zemmour, lecturer in economics at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne, already very vocal against the government at the time of pension reform. The 2019-2021 reform will have led to a reduction in unemployment benefits of 16% according to a first report from Unedic as well as a reduction in beneficiaries compensated.
Bruno Coquet clearly recognizes the effectiveness of these texts: “Take maximum advantage of the budgetary opportunities offered by the effects of the good economic situation on Unédic’s finances. More revenue, less spending. The State has thus allocated 12 billion euros in levies on the surpluses planned by Unedic for the years 2023 to 2026. In reality, a tax on the unemployed. » But faced with a population in favor of such reforms, why deprive yourself? “In the absence of an obstacle, and as unreasonable as it may be, it is difficult to give up this windfall while public finances are deteriorating. »
A negative impact for existing workers?
Yannick L’Horty praises at least an ideological concordance: “We can always debate the neoliberal inspiration of the reforms, but we can also recognize a certain coherence in the government’s public policy choices, of which unemployment insurance is only one of the aspects. »
The last potential consequence of these reforms is a negative impact on existing workers, according to Michaël Zemmour: “By tightening the conditions for unemployment compensation, we reduce the ability to negotiate when hiring, and for jobs that would have required better remuneration or conditions to find takers do not need to be questioned. This leads to wage stagnation.” The “de-micardization” of France is precisely the other major project presented by Gabriel Attal this Wednesday.