This is called banging your fist on the table. Emmanuel Macron warned on Tuesday that the objective of full employment, which he has set for his second five-year term, “is not yet won”, calling on those who would like a “pause” in the reforms: “wake up -you”, “we are not there”. The unemployment rate recorded a slight increase in the third quarter, to 7.4% of the active population in France (excluding Mayotte), compared to 7.2% in the second quarter, marking at best a pause in the decline, at worst a inversion of the curve in the wrong direction.
The Head of State, presenting at the Élysée a new program to support the rise of certain small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), praised his record of reforms and his supply-side policy. In an allusion to his controversial metaphor of “first in line” and the economic theory of trickle-down, he lamented having been “sometimes caricatured.” “I very sincerely believe that when we help volunteers to succeed, in any case to facilitate the rise, they pull many others behind them,” pleaded the president, displaying his “passion” always “intact” to support the entrepreneurship.
According to him, these reforms are what “allowed us to go from a little over 9% unemployment in 2017 to 7% this year”. “We see that we are on a plateau. It’s not won yet, we are not at full employment,” he added, while welcoming this drop which occurred even though “many of our neighbors who were in much better shape situation stagnated or even had a situation that was deteriorating.
“In many of your sectors, we still have a lot of unfilled jobs while we are at 7% unemployment. So which means that we have not arrived,” he insisted, at a time when some in the presidential camp are pleading for new, potentially unpopular reforms to achieve full employment. “I see with concern” the “ambient discourse” which would plead for “going back on the reforms to put them on pause”, added Emmanuel Macron.
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“Wake up! I tell you in all sincerity, wake up! We are at 7% unemployment rate,” “we are not there,” he insisted. The Head of State promised to “redouble efforts on major reforms” and to “redouble courage and energy in matters of work and employment”, “because it takes courage to make the reforms”.