• This Friday, INSEE released unemployment figures for the last quarter of 2021.

  • The unemployment rate is historically low, since you have to go back to… 2008 to find traces of an even lower percentage.

  • The way out of the crisis therefore seems to be going rather well, despite a few nuances to be made.

This Friday morning, INSEE transmitted the employment figures with very good news: in the fourth quarter of 2021, the unemployment rate fell to 7.4% of the working population in France, or 0.6 points. less in three months, after a full year of unemployment at an almost stable rate (between 8.1% and 8% in the last four quarters).

Not only is the rise in unemployment during the health crisis offset, but even the level of 2019 is beaten.

Just before the coronavirus, at the end of 2019, the unemployment rate was 8.2%, or 0.8 points more than at the end of 2021. We have to go back to… 2008 to find such a low number of job seekers.

How to explain such a success?

This figure illustrates the overall good economic health of France in 2021. Among other things, 650,000 jobs created in the private sector during the year thanks to a flourishing growth of 7%: "Unemployment only reflects the current good French trend and has always been correlated with growth”, recalls Yannick L'Horty, professor of economics at Eiffel University and specialist in labor economics.

Action reaction

The decline movement is partly in reaction to the annus horribilis 2020. "There was a very strong recession in 2020 and a recovery of the same intensity in 2021. A simple action-reaction in the economy", continues the expert.

Such a phenomenon has also been observed in all rich countries facing the health crisis.

Stéphanie Villers, an economist specializing in macro, also sees in it the success of "Whatever it costs" and state aid, which will have made it possible to secure employees in post even at the height of the economic shutdown of the countries, but also to accelerate recruitment: “In 2021, there was a 12.2% increase in investments for companies, thanks in particular to loans guaranteed by the State.

However, when a company invests, it focuses mainly on two areas:

modernization and recruitment.

»

If all these reasons explain why the pre-crisis level has returned so quickly, how can the fact that it is exceeded be justified?

“We joined another trend that took place between 2015 and 2019 and which was interrupted by the coronavirus: a decrease in unemployment year after year, in compensation for the increase between 2008 and 2015, during the subprime economic crisis” , says Yannick L'Horty.

A decline also driven by some key measures of the last two five years: reform of unemployment insurance, CICE, labor law… list the professor.

Young people, really the good news?

Good news, it is among young people that the unemployment rate has fallen the most (-3.6 points), to stand at 15.9%, i.e. "the lowest levels of the previous cycles at the end of the years 80 and 90”, notes INSEE.

"These are the logical beneficiaries of recruitment policies and job creation, especially since the State has launched several measures specifically for the hiring of this population", continues Yannick L'Horty.

For example, a company can receive aid in the amount of up to 4,000 euros for hiring a young person under the age of 26, under the “1 young person 1 solution” plan.

The balance sheet is not to be idealized for all that.

This unemployment rate is based on the definition of the International Labor Office (ILO), which is based on three criteria: to be considered unemployed, the person must not have worked during the week, must be available within two weeks for a employment and must have been actively looking for work within the last four weeks.

This means that a person who has stopped looking for four weeks or who is not available within two weeks for a job is not counted as unemployed.

A balance sheet to qualify

However, INSEE notes an increase in these individuals, called the “halo around unemployment”, with 1.9 million people in this category, up from 48,000.

"This halo is particularly increasing among young people, by 0.5 points," laments Stéphanie Villers.

What seriously put the balance sheet into perspective: “Also taking into account this halo, we are actually at 4 million unemployed people in France, for around 29 million active people, or 12% of the total number of people who could work.

A much more dizzying and much more worrying figure: "Hundreds of thousands of French people are in the process of completely leaving the job market, and increasingly young, without any experience and for whom reintegration will be all the more more difficult ".

Another nuance to bring, the public aid necessary for such a result: “Between 2020 and 2021, France widened its public deficit by 400 billion, notes the economist.

It is expensive the 7.4% unemployment, ”continues the specialist bitterly.

Especially since Stéphanie Villers then quotes the unemployment rate in England or Germany, respectively at 4.2% and 5.2%: “When France looks at itself, it is reassured, when it compares itself, it worries ".

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