SThere is one point on which Emmanuel Macron has kept his promises, that of employment. During the 2017 presidential campaign, his ambition to reduce the unemployment rate to 7% of the working population and to create 1.3 million jobs was greeted with skepticism. On arrival, at the time of the 2022 presidential election, the unemployment rate exceeded this level by a hair, and 1.5 million jobs had been created, despite the Covid-19 pandemic and the energy crisis. Even today, employment figures remain good.
How to explain this performance? In 2017, the candidate’s team expected job creation to result in part from the recovery in economic activity (550,000 planned), but above all, for the most part, from structural measures in favor of training (550 000) and the reduction in labor costs (200,000). Obviously, she anticipated neither the health crisis nor the energy shock following Russian aggression against Ukraine.
In fact, growth was less good than expected, which is not difficult to understand, but job creation was, paradoxically, stronger than expected. It is in fact productivity which has suffered the differential, with a drop of 0.4% per year since mid-2017, which has never been seen, due to measures in favor of people far from the employment, whose contribution to production is lower than that of existing employees. When an unemployed young person or a tired senior finds a job, average productivity drops, but it is still good news.
But this explanation does not exhaust the entire paradox. Eric Heyer and his colleagues from the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE) have effectively highlighted an impact of labor costs (+130,000 jobs) and an effect of training (+250,000 apprentices), but which are not enough not to explain the observed results (“Under the threat of unemployment”, Policy Briefnoto 121, October 2023).
To try to do this, we must take into account the exceptional aid to businesses during the health crisis, which kept non-viable activities afloat (+300,000 jobs), and the average reduction in working hours, which is slow, for the moment, to return to its pre-pandemic level (+160,000 jobs). And, despite this, the count is not there: nearly 500,000 job creations remain unexplained.
Feeling of impoverishment
The question is whether this good performance is acquired, or precarious. Because times are changing. Suspended during the health crisis, business failures have been increasing in recent months, accelerated by the tightening of financing conditions. Workforce retention behaviors, which had become widespread in the context of severe recruitment difficulties, are no longer necessary. Even the successes of public employment policy appear fragile: the million apprentices cost nearly 25 billion euros to public finances, according to calculations by Bruno Coquet, researcher associated with the OFCE. A sign of poor targeting, almost two thirds come from higher education.
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