2024-02-20 17:52:01
Sluggish GDP growth, and therefore employment, but revenues which continue to cover expenses, despite the government’s appetite: Unédic presented on Tuesday a trajectory of its financial balance from 2024 to 2027 that is significantly worse than that revealed in September, but still sufficiently surplus for the unemployment insurance system to hope to significantly reduce its debt by then.
The surplus thus stood at +1.6 billion euros in 2023, after +4.3 billion in 2022, and would fall to +1.1 billion this year. But it would rise significantly in the following years.
From 63.6 billion at the end of 2021, due to Covid, the debt would fall to 38.6 billion at the end of 2027, thanks to the economic effects over the period (11 billion), but above all to those of the compensation reforms imposed by the Philippe and Borne governments (23 billion). This, despite 12 billion deductions from the State to finance apprenticeship and France Travail, the new public employment service network.
“Unédic remains solvent”
With these levies which reduce the capacity to reduce debt, “we have taken a big hit in the back of the head […] but Unédic remains solvent”, welcomed the new president of Unédic, Jean-Eudes Tesson of Medef, emphasizing during a press conference that the current context was not “the simplest than the regime has known.”
The context is, first of all, slow activity, recalled the general director of Unédic, Christophe Valentie. Basing itself, as always for this exercise, on the consensus of economists, its teams retained a GDP growth hypothesis of 0.7% in 2024, lower by 0.3 points than that, just revised, of the government .
As a result, the pause in job creation affiliated with unemployment insurance that appeared in 2023 is expected to continue this year, before they then start again. The number of unemployed people receiving compensation is also expected to stagnate, before falling by 2027, under the effect of the resumption of hiring and the rise of reforms.
Taking into account the assumptions of an increase in the payroll, Unédic is still counting on an increase in its revenues, which would increase from 48.1 billion in 2024 to 51.6 billion three years later. Expenditures – mainly unemployment benefits and financing from France Travail – are expected to follow an inverse curve, decreasing from 44.5 to 40.4 billion over the period.
Result, excluding State levies, revenues would be “significantly higher” than expenses, Jean-Eudes Tesson and the vice-president, Patricia Ferrand of the CFDT, did not fail to emphasize. Specifically, the cumulative financial balance over the period considered would have made it possible to reduce the debt to 25.5 billion.
Between the partial activity, of which Unédic financed a third during Covid, these levies and the additional financial interest that goes with it (1 billion), the unemployment insurance system financed 31 billion in national effort , they put it before.
The threat of Attal
What happens next, although still very vague, does not reassure them. In his general policy declaration, Gabriel Attal threatened the social partners to take back control if the financial trajectory of Unédic, although still good, deviates, without us knowing in relation to what…
The government must also specify whether or not it maintains the plan to increase Unédic’s contribution to the budget of the operator France Travail (formerly Pôle emploi) from 11% to 12%, or even 13% of its revenue. It also remains to be seen the fate of the latest unemployment insurance agreement, suspended from that of the negotiation on the employment of seniors.
More generally, it is Unédic’s place in the France Travail network that will be at stake: the tripartite agreement with the State and the former Pôle emploi has still not been signed. Jean-Eudes Tesson therefore reiterated his concern to see the role of the regime limited to that of financial operator. “The performance of France Travail, with the challenge of reducing unemployment, is a subject of great importance for Unédic,” he warned, asking the government for stability.
#Unemployment #Insurance #remains #green #surpluses #smaller #expected