“Emmanuel Macron announces new unemployment insurance reform amid multiple changes”

What if unemployed workers hadn’t seen anything yet? The announcement of a new unemployment insurance reform was made by Emmanuel Macron during his interview with readers of the Parisian/Today in Francepublished Sunday, April 23.

Asked about the possibility of a tightening of the “compensation conditions”, the President of the Republic replied: ” We did it ! We had to have a system that encourages people to return to work, especially when the economy is strong, it is the reform of unemployment insurance. As long as we are at an unemployment level above 6%, the system does not need to be tightened. The idea is that if we go towards 6% unemployment, then we would probably need a mechanism that tightens the rules a little more. »

Emmanuel Macron thus implicitly repeats that the achievement at the end of his second term (2022-2027) of the objective of full employment, i.e. an unemployment rate below 5%, is not illusory, despite the skepticism economists.

But, supposed to be part of a strategy to win back public opinion after the pension reform episode – marked by strikes and massive demonstrations and the controversial recourse to Article 49 paragraph 3 of the Constitution –, the he presidential interview can only distance the executive a little further from the unions. Which, however, know the difficulties of mobilizing on the theme of unemployment: many people see unemployed workers as responsible for their situation, a common representation that employee organizations attribute to the executive.

Despite appeals to the courts by organizations representing employees, several unemployment insurance reforms took place during Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term (2017-2022). They result from a resumption in hand of the fixing of the rules by the government to the detriment of the piloting by the unions and the employers. On October 1, 2021, a new method of calculating the daily reference wage (SJR), which is the basis for determining the amount of return-to-work assistance allowances (ARE) came into force. On 1 December of that same year, the duration of affiliation – of salaried work –, which allows the opening or reloading of rights to compensation, increased from 4 to 6 months. This duration is calculated over a period of 24 months for people under 53 years of age, 36 months for people aged 53 and over.

A new change has been implemented since February 1, 2023. The maximum duration of payment of the ARE has been reduced by a quarter. The compensation rules that were implemented until January 31 will be implemented in one of these two scenarios:

• the unemployment rate rises to 9%;
• this level increased by 0.8 points over a quarter.

France is still far from an unemployment rate of 6%. In the fourth quarter of 2022, the unemployment rate stood at 7.2% of the active population in France with the exception of Mayotte, assessed the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee) in a document published on February 14.

According to a tableau to download from the organization’s website, the unemployment rate has never been lower than 6% since the fourth quarter of 1980 (5.8%), during the presidency of Valéry Giscard d’Estaing (1974 -nineteen eighty one). Under the effect of two oil crises, France was moving away from full employment. More than half of the country’s current population was unborn.