Is it because the government has pre-empted the subject throughout the five-year term, with its mantra that “work must pay”? Or because, against all expectations, the health crisis has led to a drop in unemployment and record creations of salaried jobs? Poll after poll, the theme of employment and wages is struggling to emerge in the presidential campaign. Three months before the election, and against a backdrop of rising energy and food prices, the French say they are much more concerned about issues of purchasing power than employment and unemployment. A subject that paralyzed them five years ago.
“It’s a typical situation when employment is better: unemployment becomes a less important subject. But it is worrying: it means that we are satisfied with an unemployment rate of 8%, while the question of full–employment and youth employment should remain a central subject with a view to the next five-year period”, believes Philippe Martin, the boss of the Economic Analysis Council (CAE), a think tank attached to Matignon.
On the side of the candidates for the Elysée, even if the programs are not all formalized and if the question of financing is far from being settled, the proposals are emerging. “The first dignity is that of being able to live from one’s work”, says Valérie Pécresse (LR). She wants to increase by 10%, during the five-year term, net salaries up to 2.2 minimum wage (2,800 euros net), which would benefit some 12 million people. For this, the president of the Ile-de-France region intends to lower the old-age contributions paid by employees. The measure would cost 25 billion euros, including 7 billion in the first year to boost wages by 3%. The State would finance entirely in 2022, assures his team, “by making savings on public expenditure”.
Limit the wage gap within companies
Marine Le Pen, she wants « target[er] the most modest, of course, but also the middle classes, eternally forgotten”. In November 2021, in a grandstand at Echoes, she proposed to exempt companies from employers’ contributions which will increase by 10% employees earning up to three times the minimum wage. For his part, Eric Zemmour has “reduce contributions to make each year a 13and months to employees who receive the minimum wage”. That is 100 euros more per month, so that the “employees stop getting poorer”, he said during his meeting, in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis), in December 2021.
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