The Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, declared, Sunday December 10, that he wanted to raise by two years the age of access to longer compensation for older unemployed people, without taking up Bruno Le Maire’s proposal to shorten the duration of compensation.
“We would like this increase in the duration of employment of senior job seekers to be shifted by two years, from 55 to 57 years, to be consistent with what we have done on the retirement age and because that we know that one of the challenges for full employment in France is the employment of seniors”said Olivier Dussopt during the program “Political Questions” on France Inter, with The world and France Télévisions.
The maximum duration of compensation for the unemployed by unemployment insurance is currently eighteen months up to the age of 52, twenty-two and a half months for those aged 53-54 and twenty-seven months for those aged 55 and over. .
The main measure of the pension reform, implemented in 2023, is the increase in the legal retirement age by two years, to 64 years. At the end of November, the Minister of the Economy, Bruno Le Maire, considered that longer compensation for those over 55 was a way of “retire early for those over 55”. He said he wanted to lower the duration of their compensation to the same level as that of other unemployed people, from twenty-seven to eighteen months.
For Olivier Dussopt, “the question is not so much the duration [d’indemnisation] than to ensure that we do not have systems” which encourage “get seniors out of the job market”. He recalled that the employment rate of seniors was much lower in France than the European average. An increase of two years in the age limits will have to “to be accompanied by a training effort”added the Minister of Labor.
He also defended the conventional termination, a system which again should not be used to force seniors out of the labor market earlier. “The conventional termination is a tool for fluidity, there are 500,000 per yearhe argued. Year after year, the share of conventional terminations in the reasons for ending a permanent contract remains stable, from 11% to 12%. »
“We want to find the means” so that “the conventional termination should not be used as a tool for seniors to exit the labor market, but should remain a tool of fluidity and freedom” and reciprocal agreement between the employee and his employer, the minister further declared.