Emmanuel Macron does not miss an opportunity to congratulate himself on the drop in unemployment in France since his election in 2017. It is true that the famous curve, the reversal of which his predecessor long awaited, has landed at its lowest level since 1982, to 7.1% in the first quarter of 2023. Alas, the victory was ultimately short-lived. In recent months, the unemployment rate has started to rise again slowly, but surely. In the fourth quarter of last year, it stabilized compared to the previous one, at 7.5%, according to data published Tuesday February 13 by INSEE.
But the movement might not stop there, if only for mechanical reasons. From January 1, 2025, all RSA recipients, or some 1.86 million people, will be automatically registered with France Travail – formerly Pôle emploi – making the statistics explode. In the meantime, a new category, on which a working group chaired by economist Eric Heyer is working, should be created to make it easier to read and analyze this development without causing panic. A formality? Not really, because the problem lies elsewhere. If the number of job seekers registered with France Travail is an indicator scrutinized by the government, it is above all the unemployment rate within the meaning of the ILO, calculated by INSEE, which is important. For L’Express, Eric Heyer discusses the consequences of this change of framework and the potential implications for the government.
L’Express: Why will the arrival of France Travail shake up the way we count unemployment?
Eric Heyer: It is absolutely necessary to distinguish the figures from France Travail, which are administrative data, from those from INSEE. For the first, we are not talking about the unemployed, but about job seekers at the end of the month (DEFM). For the latter, these are unemployment figures as defined by the International Labor Office (ILO), a completely different methodology used by INSEE. What is certain is that the reform of the full employment law will certainly upset the DEFM statistics, since we will ask all RSA beneficiaries to register with France Travail.
This will cause a huge jump, with around 1.2 million more job seekers. Let us add that all the young people who are in integration pathways, around 300 to 400,000, will also have to integrate the statistics. Today, there are only 17 departments experimenting with it, but from this February, we will increase to 48.
Could unemployment as defined by the ILO also see a jump?
It’s more complicated because “behavior” comes into play. Unemployment within the meaning of the ILO is calculated from the “Employment Survey” carried out by INSEE during which you are asked questions, and depending on your answers, you are considered unemployed or not. You must first answer the following question: “Did you work during the reference week?” You have to answer “no”, but that is not enough to be unemployed. We will then ask you other questions, including: “Are you immediately available?” If the person says “no”, because of an internship or training for example, in these cases, even if they have not worked, they will not be considered unemployed. On the other hand, if it is immediately available, comes a final question: “Are you actively looking for work?” If the answer is still “yes” then you are considered unemployed, otherwise, if you check two yes out of the three answers, you are in what is called the unemployment halo which currently includes more than 2 million people, including approximately 700,000 who are not actively seeking employment.
With the France Travail reform, the RSA will be conditional on 15 hours of activity during which people will, for example, redo their CV and start looking for a job again. There are potentially 700,000 people who could move from the halo of unemployment to unemployment, an extraordinary leap in the statistics.
When will this impact be visible?
In 2024, not much will happen. On the other hand, the big shock will take place in 2025 for the figures of job seekers at the end of the month registered with France Travail. The Directorate for the Animation of Research, Studies and Statistics (Dares) has one year to put in place analysis tools in order to better understand developments in DEFM once the measure has been put in place. The objective is to identify the causes, deterioration of the economic situation or effects produced by the France Travail reform.
If this massification takes place, what consequences could this have?
I chair a working group at the National Council for Statistical Information (Cnis) which is considering this issue in order to ask Dares by January 2025 to prepare an efficient tool which allows us to comment a little more accurately on the DEFM developments.
On the other hand, for unemployment as defined by the ILO, the room for maneuver is more limited. These are the same questions that are asked everywhere in all developed countries. There, you have to let things happen. And if this increases unemployment, we will be in real trouble. This could be a bad blow for the government in two ways. The first: this increases unemployment figures, while Emmanuel Macron aims for full employment in 2027. Even without this reform, it should increase anyway, so imagine how far. The second: the new unemployment insurance rules provide that if the unemployment rate rises above 9%, the duration of compensation will be extended, which would involve additional expenses. These reforms were carried out to save money, they could ultimately cost some money.
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