Emmanuel Macron facing the challenge of rising unemployment

2023-11-16 04:31:25

Emmanuel Macron at the Elysée, November 9, 2023. CLAUDIA GRECO / REUTERS

Will Emmanuel Macron be able to maintain his objective of reaching full employment at the end of his second five-year term? The President of the Republic has been repeating it like a mantra since the 2022 presidential campaign, he wants to see the unemployment rate fall to around 5% of the active population by 2027. But following a continuous decline since his first election, in 2017, the trend is starting to turn around.

In a difficult context for the Head of State, between the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the fight once morest anti-Semitism in France, the ongoing war in Ukraine or the fight once morest global warming, here is the situation of the job market once once more points his nose at subjects likely to complicate the end of his second term.

According to figures published Wednesday, November 15 by INSEE, the unemployment rate – as defined by the International Labor Office (ILO) – increased by 0.2 points in the third quarter to stand at 7.4%. There are 2.3 million unemployed, which is 64,000 more than the previous quarter.

Irony of political life, the day before the publication of these negative results, the “full employment” bill was definitively adopted by the National Assembly, following having been in the Senate on November 9. “The provisions of [ce texte] create new tools to progress towards our central objective: full employment for everyone, everywhere”declared the Minister of Labor, Olivier Dussopt, in the Hemicycle on Tuesday.

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An “obviously one-off” increase in unemployment

A declaration which confirms the ambition of the executive but which seems out of time, while unemployment increases for the second consecutive quarter, testifying to the slowdown, or even the much-feared reversal of the labor market. The most marked increase concerns 18-24 year olds, whose unemployment rate rises to 17.6% (+ 0.7 points), close to its level a year ago. That of those aged 25-49 increased by 0.2 points over the quarter, to 6.7%, and that of those aged 50 or over was stable, at 5.1%.

Unusually, Olivier Dussopt reacted even before the official publication of these figures, hoping that this increase would be “obviously punctual”. “We might expect such an increase given the slowdown in the global economy – particularly linked to the tightening of central bank monetary policies – and geopolitical tensions”he said on Wednesday morning.

The objective, already audacious, now appears to be wishful thinking. An ephemeral nature yet very unlikely according to the forecasts of the Banque de France, which anticipates a gradual rise in unemployment to reach 7.8% in 2025, and those of the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE), which expects at a rate of 7.9% from the end of 2024.

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