Should we really shift the retirement age to reduce the deficit of the system? Yes, answers the government which has long since decided and will present on December 15 a reform which risks setting France ablaze again. Not necessarily, answers a study published last June by the chair “Demographic transitions, economic transition”, attached to Sciences Po and directed by the economist Jean-Hervé Lorenzi. The magic formula? First increase the employment rate of seniors aged 55 to 64 by ten points, which could save us from going through a long tunnel of strikes and demonstrations. “Our intention is of course not to suggest that there is no debate to be had on the retirement age, but to put this essential and somewhat forgotten issue at the center of the discussions. employment of seniors”, explains the expert mischievously.
The conclusions of this study have not fallen on deaf ears… But on those of the unions who have been sharpening their weapons for several months to undermine the pension reform. All hammer in chorus: let’s first tackle the employment of the most experienced, before using the bazooka of pension reform. “We will not be able to discuss the extension of the career if we do not resolve the fate of all those who are kicked out before retirement,” warned Laurent Berger, the boss of the reformist CFDT. “Let us already work to keep seniors employed, or to help them find one”, agrees Michel Beaugas, confederal secretary of the most demanding FO. A unanimous outcry taken into account by the Ministry of Labor, which included this issue in the cycle of consultations held in the fall with the social partners. Prime Minister Elisabeth Borne has also promised in her presentation of the main lines of the pension reform during an interview with Le Parisien: measures to boost the employment of seniors will be on the program.
The unions are far from wrong in pointing out this problem. France is distinguished by a low employment rate for 55-64 year olds. According to the latest Eurostat figures, this stood at 55.9% in 2021, compared to an average of 60.5% in the European Union. In Sweden, this indicator even climbs to 76.9%! “We are not so bad on the 55-59 age group, but on the next one, we are really lagging behind”, explains Gilbert Cette, professor at Neoma Business School and labor market expert. The legal retirement age set at 62 explains part of our poor performance, but not all of it. Many seniors are indeed pushed out by companies well before retirement age. “For years, we considered that work should be shared in the face of mass unemployment and that it was therefore better to separate from the oldest and hire young people”, sighs Éric Chevée, vice-president of the CPME. responsible for social issues. A situation where these sometimes exhausted employees can sometimes find their account, the unemployment benefit system constituting a kind of “early retirement” allowing them to wait wisely until the moment when they will liquidate their rights. “In many small structures, the problem is above all that of requalification: if tomorrow an employee can no longer fulfill his function, it can be very complicated to find him another position within the TPE”, underlines Jean -Christophe Repon, vice-president of U2P (French union of local businesses).
Senior index and phased retirement
But for the less fortunate, who find themselves unemployed before being able to take advantage of this calendar windfall effect, the potion is more bitter… Because they have much more difficulty than other age groups in finding a job. A phenomenon that has a double explanation: companies may be reluctant to hire a person deemed potentially less productive, and gray-haired job seekers have higher salary expectations. Broken by arduous jobs, a certain number of seniors also find themselves on disability or on long-term sick leave before retirement, and join the ranks of 55-64 year olds who have been sidelined. “80% of workers arrested for more than 3 months are over 46 years old”, underlines Angélique Barth, confederal secretary of the CGT. A socially worrying situation… but which also has a cost which could erase part of the savings expected from the pension reform. Many options have already been tested to promote the maintenance or return to employment of seniors, such as the Delalande contribution at the end of the 1980s – a tax on companies that made them redundant – or the generation contract – financial aid for employers who hired a young person on a permanent contract while maintaining a senior in employment – launched by François Hollande in 2013, but they were far from having dazzling effects… “Contrary to the increase in the legal age of departure to retirement, which has enabled us to increase the employment rate of 55-64 year olds by almost 20 points in less than fifteen years”, underlines Bertrand Martinot, adviser at the Institut Montaigne and former social adviser to Nicolas Sarkozy at the ‘Elysium. But the step to be taken is still high.
For the moment, the government has unveiled only a few of its marbles. The first should be the launch of a “Senior Index” on the model of the one that already exists in terms of equality between women and men, which obliges companies to be transparent about their wage inequalities. “This index would have two positive effects: it empowers the employer and facilitates the search for jobs for 55-64 year olds, who can target companies that hire seniors”, explains Marc Ferracci, Renaissance deputy and labor market expert, who also made another proposal: to compensate for any salary discount when a job seeker takes up employment with a “premium” calculated on the basis of his remaining unemployment rights. A mechanism that could encourage them to return to a job more quickly, even if it is less well paid than their previous positions, because the remaining capital would then be greater… and the premium higher. Another track followed by the government: to simplify and make more attractive the devices of accumulation jobs-retirements and progressive retirement.
“But we must not play small arm: it is necessary to put in place a powerful plan and acting on all the levers: if we only have a few measures, we will be beside the subject”, judge Franck Morel, lawyer expert in law du travail, former social adviser to Edouard Philippe at Matignon and author of a study on the subject for the Institut Montaigne. Among his proposals: modulate the rate of social security contributions according to the age of the employee, create end-of-career agreements to promote conventional end-of-career arrangements or remove the ceiling on the CPF for workers aged 50 and over up to a contribution made in particular by the employer. More pessimistic, Eric Heyer, director of the analysis and forecasting department of the OFCE and specialist in the labor market, believes that it “will be complicated to catch up with history and to act on the stock, that is to say people who are already considered seniors, but we can act upstream, by investing in people who are in their forties so as not to end up with a flow of people who are worn out, less productive or who no longer have the appropriate skills”. With once again on the job market a key lever to be activated: that of improving vocational training throughout life. “The solution is also to reduce unemployment overall: the greater the job creations, the less the temptation will be to part ways with seniors at an early age,” emphasizes Gilbert Cette. One more reason for the government to pursue the goal of full employment at all costs.