Emmanuel Macron announces a new turn of the screw on the unemployed

2024-01-16 23:20:06

The former Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, had been waiting for the green light for weeks… End of the suspense. Emmanuel Macron announced the launch “next spring” of act 2 of the labor market reform put into orbit the day after his first election, in 2017. “The government will encourage the creation and resumption of a job,” the president said without elaborating. However, he clarified that there will be “tougher rules when job offers are refused and better support for our unemployed through training, but also in employment on very concrete things such as housing or transport “.

It will therefore be Catherine Vautrin, the new figure of the Ministry of Labor, who will take over this project already prepared on the sly. A second salvo of reform, while the law for full employment law of December 18, 2023 is barely beginning to apply with the creation of France Travail and the reform of the RSA. What will its contours be beyond the main lines? It will be a question of “combining more training, more flexibility, more mobility, more anticipation and when we can simplify, it’s better”, outlined the outgoing minister last December.

As for the new tightening of the screws on the unemployed called by Emmanuel Macron, the proposal certainly risks turning the spotlight on the unions in the middle of negotiations on stricter conditions of compensation for seniors. Current rules already provide for sanctions for refusing two job offers.

The objective of these future measures is “to achieve full employment”, an objective set for 2027 and corresponding to an unemployment rate of 5% compared to 7.4% currently. A course that Emmanuel Macron maintains despite the economic downturn that is taking shape for this year. The Banque de France and the OFCE forecast an unemployment rate of around 8%. Gabriel Attal says he himself is “lucid” about the “uncertain” economic context. It is also during his general policy speech that the new Prime Minister should outline the contours of this reform.