Some are already talking about “full employment 2027”. Could full employment become a campaign slogan, while households seem monopolized by the question of purchasing power? The idea is gaining ground among macronists driven by a succession of good indicators – a 7% growth record for more than fifty years in 2021, an unemployment rate approaching the 7% promised by candidate Macron in 2017… “It seems to me that full employment would be a good goal for the next five years”confirms the general delegate of La République en Marche (LRM), Stanislas Guerini. “Achieving full employment is the new objective that France must set itself”, abounds an Elysian adviser.
The Head of State himself mentioned this ambition in a sentence in his speech on November 9, 2021: “We must not aim for just 7% unemployment, but full employment. » And several ministers have been talking about it openly since this fall. “For the first time in half a century”France can reach “what the other great developed nations have achieved for years, full employment”, hammers Bruno Le Maire, the Minister of the Economy, who even mentioned before the deputies “a level of unemployment of 5 to 6%” in October 2021. Labor Minister Elisabeth Borne also spoke about “results that allow us to glimpse a return to full employment”, on CNews, Thursday, February 17, on the occasion of the publication of the latest unemployment figures.
Making full employment a component of Emmanuel Macron’s campaign and, perhaps, the goal of a second term is clearly a working hypothesis, multiple sources say. According to another adviser, “full employment is a credible objective, within reach of the French economy within five years. The whole question is to choose the right indicator”, recalling that” there are a generation of people, those who entered the labor market in 1982, who do not know what full employment is”.
“The mythology of the “glorious thirties””
If endorsed by Emmanuel Macron, the bet would have obvious political meaning. Full employment, “It’s the mythology of the ‘glorious thirties’, a society of trust in which we no longer fear that a false step will make you fall into precariousness”, decrypts Emmanuel Rivière, from the Kantar Public Institute. It is also a response to other anxieties, such as the financing of social protection and pensions, the tensions on the school system and, of course, purchasing power.
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