Structural or cyclical flight? The myth of working for an entire career in a single company has been swept away. Did it even exist? The phenomenon is indeed far from recent. The first employment survey was conducted in France in 1950 (Dominique Goux, Insee, 2003), shortly after the creation of the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies on April 27, 1947. Insee refined its methods, increased its publications and showed that external mobility increased year after year. In 1970, 30% of employed workers worked in a different establishment than in 1965, compared to only 20% between 1959 and 1964 (Insee, December 1973) – these were the “Thirty Glorious Years”.
The trend continued in the following decades: 26% of people employed in both 1998 and 2003 changed companies at least once between these two dates (Insee 2010). A figure that peaks at 30% in the Ile-de-France region. It rises to 40% among unskilled workers in the provinces, this time in a period of globalization and deindustrialization that often leads to unemployment. It is very high, at 33%, for executives in the Paris region but for other reasons: “a space in the labor market where individuals can easily sell their skills and change companies,” analyzes Frédéric Lainé, then working at INSEE.
Twenty years later, external mobility continues, but this time for everyone and everywhere: “more employees changed companies in 2022 than before the health crisis”, announces INSEE (“Employment, unemployment, income from work”, July 2024).
However, we should not misunderstand the causes of these external movements. In the past, they were often suffered by the employee: “in 1950, unemployment was residual (of the order of 150 to 200,000 unemployed people (Lévy-Bruhl, 1977), but already represented a political concern”, indicates Dominique Goux. This was followed by the creation of the National Employment Agency by decree on July 13, 1967, at the initiative of the Secretary of State for Employment, Jacques Chirac. Forty years later, in the midst of the subprime crisis, we are talking about “flexicurity” (a neologism born in the second half of the 1990s, imported from the Danish model): “allowing individuals to reconcile work flexibility and career security”, define Guillemette de Larquier and Delphine Remillon (Insee, January-March 2008).
The wish for professional social security, notably defended by professors Pierre Cahuc and Francis Kramarz (2004) is concomitant with a darker reality: the number of unemployed exceeded the threshold of 2 million in October 2008. Often forced ruptures. “A reversal of the unemployment curve” which was slow under the mandate of François Hollande (2012-2017) and whose rate even reached 10.5% in the first quarter of 2015, but which materialized under the first five-year term of Emmanuel Macron.
Leave to earn more?
The decline in unemployment continues (despite a rise to 9% in the third quarter of 2020), as does mobility. “In 2023, 18.3% of private sector employees in 2022 left their employer, 1.3 points more than in 2019, before the health crisis. The greater mobility observed in the data in 2022 is thus confirmed and supports the hypothesis of a lasting change in employee behavior,” indicate the authors of the latest INSEE study. This phenomenon, already observed in the 1970s (300,000 unemployed, less than 4%), before the first oil shock of 1973, returns in 2023, but with 2.3 million people unemployed and an unemployment rate that still stands at 7.5% in the first quarter of 2024 (INSEE). All age groups succumb to it, including those over 50, although it is the 30-49 year-olds who are most affected, and especially employees on permanent contracts (CDI). You don’t leave a CDI? Another myth falls. Moreover, one in four employees in the private sector (25.6%) on a contract in the first working week of September 2022 left their company a year later.
For 26.3% of employees who wanted to find a new job in 2023, increasing their income (4.2 points more since 2021) is the main reason, on a par with the desire to improve their working conditions, – that one in two employees feels professionally exhausted (2023 barometer, Malakoff-Humanis). A desire for change despite a third myth to deconstruct: contrary to a widespread idea, salary developments are often less favorable for mobile employees than for those who have remained in place (“Employment, unemployment, income from work”, Insee 2024). In the short term at least. Indeed, those leaving are more likely to get a raise when changing companies but they sometimes forget in their calculation that certain benefits or bonuses linked to the previous financial year (profit-sharing, participation, bonuses) are not paid in the first year of a new job, or are correlated to the time spent in the company (seniority bonus).
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