A dizzying estimate of 832 million hours of unemployment. Or 97 hours. Or 2.8 weeks at 35 hours, on average, per employee. About 8.6 million employees were effectively placed on short-time working in April on authorization requests made for 11.8 million, or just over 70%, according to an estimate released this Wednesday by Dares, the statistical service from the Ministry of Labor.
To use partial activity in the face of the coronavirus crisis, companies must first submit a request for prior authorization to the administration. They generally make very large requests but do not necessarily use everything. Only the claims for compensation subsequently filed, to obtain reimbursement of the wages paid, make it possible to determine the number of employees actually placed in partial activity.
Several sources of information
As of May 18, one week after the start of deconfinement, the compensation claims noted for April concern 4.5 million employees, but all the claims have not yet been filed, the companies having a deadline of a year.
In order to estimate the number of employees actually placed in partial activity, Dares used two additional sources of information. On the one hand, an investigation "which makes it possible to estimate the effective non-recourse to partial activity for companies which had nevertheless filed an authorization request". On the other hand, "a specific consultation carried out with 1,000 declarants who have not yet made a claim for compensation for April".
"Limited" workforce reductions
The cumulative requests for partial unemployment authorization since March 1 concern 12.7 million employees on May 18, with a slight increase in recent weeks. The Dares study also shows that the workforce reductions "remained limited in April". "Companies having reduced their workforce represent 13% of employees at the end of April (after 11% at the end of March)".
These reductions in staff mainly involve the non-renewal of fixed-term contracts and the cancellation or postponement of planned hirings, "the dismissal remains marginal although in slight progression". From March 1 to May 17, only 53 job protection plans (for 2,853 job cuts) were initiated, compared to 111 last year (for 8,194 job cuts) at the same time.
Better for construction
In addition, 832 “small collective redundancies” (less than 10 employees) were initiated. While in March, 19% of employees were in a company whose activity had stopped, "they are only 12% in April," according to Dares, who notes "a particularly marked improvement in construction" (16% stopped after 53% in March).
The causes of the fall in activity in April are above all the loss of job openings (45%) or administrative closings (30%), far ahead of the lack of staff able to work (14%) and supply difficulties (11 %).
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