“History”. This Tuesday, on Twitter, the majority Renaissance party expressed its enthusiasm for the new unemployment figure: 7.2%. “Unemployment at its lowest for forty years”, exulted the party created by Emmanuel Macron. Same thing on the account of the Minister of Labor Olivier Dussopt: “The unemployment rate reaches the lowest level in 40 years reached once at the beginning of 2008”.
Other members of the government share the same data, such as Olivia Grégoire, the Minister in charge of SMEs, Trade and Crafts: “No offense to the prophets of downgrading, the unemployment rate has never been so low for forty years. We will not stop there. We will continue to act so that it falls even further and thus achieve full employment in 2027, ”she posted on her Twitter account.
If the figure is good, the reading is bad, a user tells us. The rate is certainly decreasing, but it is not at its lowest level in four decades. Here’s why.
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The figure fell on Tuesday February 14: “The unemployment rate remained almost stable in the fourth quarter of 2022, at 7.2% of the working population in France, against 7.3%” in the third quarter “. According to INSEE figures, “the number of unemployed as defined by the International Labor Office (ILO) reached 2.2 million people, or 45,000 less compared to the previous quarter”.
Several numbers are important to compare here. For example, compared to the previous year, the unemployment rate for the 4th quarter is thus lower by 0.3 points, compared to one point before the health crisis, mentions INSEE. “The lowest level since the first quarter of 2008”, indicates the institute, indicating a “trompe-l’oeil” during the second quarter of 2020 [lors du premier confinement].
A figure that fell in 2008
But why does the government mention a period of forty and not fourteen years? The Renaissance party refers to the year 1982, when the unemployment rate was 7.1% to drop to 7.3% the following year, and to increase continuously during the following years. “Following the first oil shock (1973) and while it did not exceed 4%, the unemployment rate rose sharply until the mid-1980s, exceeding 8% of the active population. It then alternated between periods of decline and rise, linked to the economic cycle,” emphasizes INSEE in its report.
But in 2008, again according to INSEE figures, the unemployment rate fell to 6.8% in the first quarter, after several years with a rate above 8%. After 2008, the figure finally started to rise again with an unemployment rate of 9.1% in 2009 and exceeding 10% between 2013 and 2016. Not to mention the figures for 2020 influenced by a specific economic situation linked to confinement, it does not you don’t have to go back to 1982 to find an unemployment rate as low as it is today. The year 2008 is enough.
Moreover, Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne was more cautious than the members of her government. “With an unemployment rate of 7.2%, France is experiencing its lowest level of unemployment for the second time in forty years,” she tweeted on Tuesday.