THEhe President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron took advantage of the presentation of the France 2030 major investment plan on October 12 to renew his criticism of the French working time model. “When we compare ourselves, he said, we are a country which works less than the others in quantity. “ And concluded thus: “We need to have a country that produces more. “
It was this comparison that the Statistical Directorate of the Ministry of Labor (Dares) conducted in 2018, in a study document entitled ” European comparisons of working hours: illustration for eight countries “. After recalling the very great complexity of this type of comparison, the study presented a first result, not consistent with the statement of the Head of State: in 2016, the average weekly working time of employees was higher in France. than in Germany, Sweden, Italy, Denmark and the Netherlands …
So where does the idea that the French work less than others come from? It has been supported, for years, by certain highly publicized publications, which only focus on the working time of full-time employees (indeed a little lower in France than that in force in other countries). completely forgetting the contribution of workers – in reality women workers – part-time.
However, we must all the less neglect this since the French model is different from many others, in particular from the German model: part-time work is in fact both of a longer duration (23.7 hours on average in France against less than 20 hours in Germany) and less widespread (19% in France against 27% in Germany). Women therefore bear the fragmentation of employment less than elsewhere.
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These are mainly female forms of employment (47% of German women and just under 30% of French women work part-time), which often go hand in hand with lower responsibilities and lower wages.
They are partly suffered – people are then underemployed and would like to work more: in France, 44% of people working part-time do so because they have not found full-time work – and partly “chosen” “. But this last term must be used with caution: this “choice” is indeed often constrained, insofar as it makes it possible to take charge of domestic and family activities, which remain extremely poorly shared between men and women.
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