The measures of the French economic institutes are good, not their forecasts. On Friday August 11, the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) published unemployment figures in France for the second quarter of 2023.
This unemployment rate is estimated at 7.2% of the active population in France (excluding Mayotte), according to calculations by the International Labor Office (ILO). Figures almost equivalent to those of the second quarter of 2020, before the start of the Covid-19 health crisis… But which have increased compared to the previous quarter. According to INSEE, the steady decline in unemployment since 2020 seems to have reached a plateau that will be difficult to cross in the short term.
An increase of 0.1% after a decrease of 0.1%
In detail, the figures published by INSEE count 20,000 more unemployed compared to the first quarter of 2023, for a total of 2.2 million people. That is an increase of 0.1% in the unemployment rate, whereas the beginning of the year had been marked by a drop of 0.1%. An almost stable rate for all age groups, although that of 15-24 year olds is still “significantly higher than that of the rest of the population”, recalls the institute.
If this rate “remains very close to its lowest level measured since the second quarter of 1982”, INSEE specifies that it has only fallen by 0.2% in one year. For Yves Jauneau, the head of the labor market summary and economic situation division, these new figures confirm a “trend towards stability, as predicted by our last economic report in June, which forecast an unchanged unemployment rate at 7.1 % all year 2023”.
The analysis is confirmed with other indicators. The number of people registered with Pôle emploi and declared as unemployed (category A) also remained stable for this quarter, around three million unemployed. This plateau is also logically observed for the employment rate in France. For those aged 15 to 64, it is also stable at 68.6%. Again, this is its highest level since the first measurements by INSEE in 1975, but only 55-64 year olds see their rate increase by 0.7%, “partly a consequence of previous reforms” analyzes AFP .
Evolution of the unemployment rate as defined by the International Labor Office (ILO) in France since the 1st quarter of 2010, until the second quarter of 2023.
© / AFP
Behind this level, a drop in job creation
Behind this “plateau form”, as Mathieu Plane describes it, deputy director of the analysis and forecasting department of the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE), the economic institutes see it in particular as a consequence of the drop in the creation of new jobs. .
According to a provisional estimate from INSEE published in early August, there were only 19,700 net job creations in the private sector during the second quarter of 2023, compared to 86,800 in the first quarter. A difference which is explained in particular by the post-health crisis rebound, according to the OFCE. Similarly, after benefiting from the apprenticeship boom in 2021 and 2022, the youth employment rate is no longer progressing.
“Companies also have productivity losses to make up for since the Covid and could make employment an adjustment variable”, worries Mathieu Plane. An analysis shared by the OFCE: in its outlook for last April on the French economy, the institute said it expected “100,000 job losses between the end of 2022 and 2024”, with an unemployment rate estimated at 7.4% from the next quarter. A rate that could even climb to “7.9% at the end of next year”, according to the same analysis.
The government continues to bet on its reforms
Despite these pessimistic forecasts, the government is maintaining its objective of achieving full employment, i.e. an unemployment rate of approximately 5%, by 2027. To do this, the government estimates that 700,000 to 800,000 additional jobs should be created by the end of the five-year term.
According to AFP, the executive is also counting on the effect of the latest unemployment insurance reform, which has reduced the duration of compensation by 25% since February 1, 2023. A reform that the government would like to see resumed during the forthcoming social negotiations on new compensation rules, scheduled for the fall. If these negotiations go in the direction of the government, they should also make it possible to finance the so-called “France Travail” bill, providing for a reorganization of the support institutions towards employment (including Pôle emploi) and a reform of the income system. of active solidarity (RSA).
However, the deputy director of the analysis and forecasting department of the OFCE questions this strategy: for Mathieu Plane, “the reform of the RSA will not necessarily translate statistically into a drop in unemployment because it is a question of bringing employment of people who were partly not even on the labor market”.