After the decline, stagnation. While the President of the Republic, Emmanuel Macron, has made full employment – achieved when unemployment is around 5% – the objective of his second five-year term, the number of job seekers has not seen any marked change in the third trimester.
According to statistics released on Wednesday, October 26, by the direction of the animation of research, studies and statistics (Dares), which depends on the Ministry of Labor, the number of job seekers without any activity (category A) fell minimally (− 0.1%) in the third quarter, with 3.164 million people throughout the territory (including overseas, except Mayotte) against 3.165 million in the second quarter. However, the variation is greater over one year, with a drop of 10.9%.
The stagnation of the third quarter is identical if we include job seekers in reduced activity (category B and C). The number of people registered with Pôle Emploi and required to look for a job (categories A, B and C) thus amounted to 5.435 million people, down 7.1% over one year.
A sharp brake on recruitment
Such a situation was relatively expected in a complicated economic context, and it tends to show that the French job market is not yet negatively affected by the slowdown in growth (+0.2 in the third quarter), the crisis energy and inflation. At the beginning of October, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) announced “a marked slowdown” business investment and a deterioration in their results, leading to a marked slowdown in recruitment. “The general feeling is that it may turn around, but not immediately, warns Eric Heyer, director of the analysis and forecasting department of the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE). Probably more in the fourth quarter. »
For the economist, if there is indeed a break in the decline, the situation “not too worrying either”. By observing the figures for entries into categories A, B, C, we can thus see that those which increase the most concern first of all the ends of temporary assignments (+ 4.9%) but also “returns from inactivity” (+1.7%) and “rapid re-registrations”. “These are not bad entries, says Mr. Heyer. These are people who re-register when they were no longer taking steps. This does not correspond to the destruction of jobs. » At the same time, all exits are down, but this is more notable for “terminations of registration for lack of updating” (–8.6%) and administrative deletions (–6.4%).
It should be noted that the trend is more unfavorable for young people, since the number of people registered in category A of Pôle emploi under the age of 25 increased by 1.5% in the third quarter, according to Dares, to 372,300 job seekers. : a halt after a period of significant decline (− 16.1% over one year) linked in particular to the strong growth in apprenticeships.
The other negative development concerns the number of people looking for work while exercising a short reduced activity (category B), which increased by 5.5% in the third quarter (750,600, against 711,300 in the second quarter) in mainland France while those who exercise a reduced activity for a long time are less numerous than before (− 2.7%, at 1.456 million). It is therefore very likely that many people on long contracts have moved to short contracts.
Other indicators published recently provide other data. Thus, in the third quarter, according to Urssaf, the number of declarations of hiring for more than a month excluding temporary workers increased by 2.2%. This development is largely due to hirings on fixed-term contracts of more than one month (+ 3.4%), while those on permanent contracts recorded a much more measured increase (+ 1%).