Emmanuel Macron’s goal of full employment is moving a little further away. Marker of the second term of the President of the Republic, the ambition to reach an unemployment rate of around 5% of the active population in 2027, compared to 7.4% currently, is coming up against the slowdown in growth. This contributed, in the last quarter of 2023, to the 0.2% increase in the number of job seekers without any activity across the entire territory (including overseas, except Mayotte), according to the statistics released, Thursday January 25, by France Travail (formerly Pôle emploi).
Thus, this indicator now stands at 3.033 million – a figure increasing for the second quarter in a row while being a very slight decline compared to that observed a year earlier. Taking into account those who held a job, there were 5.4 million registered with France Travail over the last three months of 2023.
Faced with this situation, a harbinger of a gloomy future on the employment front, the Head of State is not giving up. He intends to push for new changes, even if it means attacking, once again, the rights of the unemployed. During his press conference on January 16, he announced his intention to set “tougher rules when job offers are refused” while proposing “better support for our unemployed”.
Statements reiterated the next day in Davos (Switzerland), during the World Economic Forum: “We are going to open a second phase of our labor market reform by tightening the unemployment insurance rules”, he said. His speech follows the numerous outings, during the fall of 2023, of Bruno Le Maire, for whom full employment would be out of reach, “constant model”. The Minister of the Economy is calling in particular for seniors, who currently benefit from preferential treatment, to be subject to the same compensation conditions as others.
“Marginal risk vis-à-vis public opinion”
Since Mr. Macron came to power in 2017, the situation of people deprived of employment has already evolved significantly, with increasingly strict parameters for receiving an allowance: extension of the contribution period for opening rights, modification of the calculation of the benefit, which results in a reduction in the monthly amount for precarious workers, overhaul of the scale of sanctions imposed on those who fail to fulfill their obligations, reduction of 25% in the duration of compensation, closure of the system for employees on fixed-term contracts who twice reject a permanent offer…
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