Unemployment figures : the government has not been able to get four straight wins – Atlantico.fr

While the number of unemployed was experiencing a reflux in the course of these last few months, the data relating to the month of December 2016 are disappointing, with an increase from 25 900 in the number of unemployed in category A. How do you explain this sudden stop ? Need there see a trend reversal ?

Pierre-François Gouiffès : In the language of sports it seems that the government has not been able to get four wins to rank in respect of job seekers class A (no occupation), a sequence that has not appeared since February 2008 – almost nine years – which says a lot about the lasting detriment of employment in France.

figures for December do not constitute a reversal of the downward trend of the unemployed in this category – which attracts in my opinion a bit wrong to most of the comments, since this sequence of decline is set in motion in April 2016. It must, however, have in mind the modesty of the movement – about a hundred thousand unemployed without any activity on the years 2016 (-3%) – compared with an increase of over 1.5 million since September 2008 or 570 000 since the arrival of François Hollande at the Elysée.

The structural weaknesses remain, in particular with the horrible increase in unemployment of more than 50 years (increase of 5% per year after the bloodletting of previous years with annual increases greater than 10%). The real improvement on the foreheads of the young must be increased by a factor of 3.5 in the last 25 years which has just been recalled by France Strategy (17% of young people neither in employment nor study, nor in education or training).

By international comparison finally, the benchmark between France and the countries of comparable population is either negative level (Germany, Uk), trend (Spain).

in Spite of the efforts made by the government to reduce the number of unemployed, for example by using widely training, it appears that people are returning to swell the figures of unemployment after their training period. How to interpret this situation ? The courses are not adapted to the needs of the companies, or is it merely an error of diagnosis, highlighting the fact that the training is not the main problem of the rise in unemployment ?

The executive has in fact completed in January 2016 in the box to the tools of the employment policy by adding to the traditional scheme of assisted contracts the novation of the training plan ” the 500 000 unemployed “. Thus, we see that the number of job seekers in the category D (people registered with the employment agency without being required to seek employment, without employment) has flamed in 2016, increasing to one-quarter (71 000), while the outputs of the categories ABC for entry into training has almost doubled in a year.

At the end of the year 2016 is characterized by a decrease of the category A (-3%), an increase in the same categories B and C, leading to the stability of the categories ABC, and a slight increase of the categories ABCD, an aggregate look at the near of initiatives 2016 the government for the training.

The data provided yesterday by the Pôle Emploi does not allow to track easily what happens to job seekers who come out of training and verify that this has increased their employability and their likelihood of re-entering the labour market, a real and good question.

The risk is that the solution of the training is a response to political and budgetary short-term presenting on paper the interest of avoiding a triple distressing issue : the question of the cost of the work, the flexibility of the labour market (see the setbacks of the government with the act work) and finally the destruction of human capital due to unemployment, long-term solid (2.4 million people by the end of 2016).

If the category Has seen its numbers increase, it is possible to see a stabilization in the number of unemployed in category A, B, C, which would seem to indicate that the right numbers of part-time experienced a ” lull “. Can you incriminate the uncertainty surrounding the upcoming presidential election in these figures ?

As previously stated, there is that category A, which decreased significantly year on year, while the unemployed with reduced activity (B and C) were increased in due proportion, what appears to be a game of communicating vessels between these three categories.

the politicization of The unemployment figures, strong for a long time but exacerbated since 2012 after successive engagements of François Hollande on this theme, a word of caution. But it may be concluded that a stabilisation of unemployment at a high level, a first level of satisfaction in regard to massive increases that have occurred in the country for eight long years (2008-2015).

There remains an immense amount of work for the next team from the elections of this year to pull the country out of the curse the economy and society that is mass unemployment.