Too expensive the fifties? This is often one of the arguments put forward by companies to justify the low employment rate of the over 55s in France – a singularity that reappeared with the pension reform, which economists are still struggling to explain. While the deputies approved, on Tuesday January 31, during the examination of the bill in committee at the National Assembly, the creation of a “senior index » in companies to improve the position of employees at the end of their careers, the figures speak for themselves. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), less than 54% of French people aged 55 to 64 were employed in 2020, compared to 60% on average in Europe and in the OECD (which includes the 38 countries most developed), and up to 71% in Denmark.
The figures also reveal a less debated reality: 55-64 year olds cost more in France than elsewhere. Their average remuneration is 17% higher than that of 25-54 year olds, according to OECD data, compared to 11% in Germany, 8% in the United States, or 3% in Denmark. In some countries, compensation even tends to decrease at the end of a career: it decreases slightly in the United Kingdom and Canada (−1%).
In France, on average, the monthly salary at age 25 amounts to approximately 1,350 euros, progresses rapidly in the following ten to fifteen years, then stagnates above 2,000 euros, before accelerating again in the next ten last years to peak around 2,300 euros, details a note from France Strategy, an organization attached to Matignon, published in 2018. In a full career, the average salary would therefore increase by around 1,000 euros.
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This gap between older employees and others has narrowed in recent years – it was twice as high in 2006. But “these differences in salary at the end of the career can have an effect on employmentconfirms Hervé Boulhol, principal economist in charge of pensions, in the direction of employment, labor and social affairs of the OECD. The countries in which wages are increasing are also those where the employment rate of seniors is low – Italy, Belgium, Greece, Austria… The correlation is not necessarily a causality, but there is when even something blatant”.
The figures are however a bit distorting, notes the organization. “There is an effect linked to the profile of people who leave the market at this age, confirms economist Alain Trannoy, director of research at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales. In France, unlike in the United States, the least qualified are those who come out first. Those who stay are better educated and better suited to the job market. However, they are also the best paid, hence this effect on wages. » It remains to be seen why the former are excluded from the market. Are they deemed less productive – a very difficult fact to establish? Or is it discrimination, stemming from stereotypical representations linked to age?
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