Bad news on the employment front. In the second quarter, the unemployment rate rose slightly, by 0.1 points compared to the previous quarter, INSEE announced this Friday morning. It is now estimated at 7.2%. Despite this reversal – the first since the third quarter of 2021 – the rate remains “0.2 points below its level in the second quarter of 2022 and 3.3 points below its peak in mid-2015”, underline the national statisticians.
For his part, the Minister of Labour, Olivier Dussopt, welcomed the increase in job creation in an X message (ex-Twitter): “Despite inflation, the unemployment rate is stable at 7.2 % in the 2nd quarter of 2023 during which our economy created more than 20,000 net jobs. This reflects a slight increase in the active population and the maintenance of the employment rate at a historically high level shows it,” he wrote.
In detail, 20,000 additional people are counted among the unemployed, according to INSEE, bringing the total slightly above 2.2 million people. The rate remains “virtually stable” in all age groups, increasing by 0.1 point among young people and among 25-49 year olds, while it continues to fall, to 5.1%, among older. Unemployment among those under 25, however, remains at its lowest level since the 1990s. The rate increased slightly among women, to 7.1%, while it fell among men, to 7.2%.
In addition, the halo around unemployment, that is, people wanting a job but neither looking for one nor being available to take one, also remains “almost stable”. 4.7% of people of working age are counted in this category, up 0.1 point over three months, indicates INSEE, which points out that the proportion of young people under the age of 25 concerned has increased by nearly one point over one year. At the same time, underemployment increased in the same proportions over the quarter, but remained well below its pre-Covid level. Long-term unemployment – people who have been searching for at least a year – remains stable: at 1.8%, it remains at its lowest level since 2009.
However, despite these slight increases in certain categories, the employment rate remains “at its highest level since 1975”. It is progressing especially among seniors, jumping by 0.3 point for those over 50, and even by 0.7 point for those over 55, while it drops very slightly among the youngest. The activity rate is also at its highest, and the share of young people neither in employment, nor in training, nor in education – the famous “NEETs” – continues to decline: the rate reaches 12.2%, more or less its level at the end of 2019.
Shaken by the health crisis, the unemployment rate has fluctuated sharply in recent years. In regular decline between the beginning of 2018 – 9.3% – and the end of 2019 – 8.2% -, it collapsed to 7.1% in the second quarter of 2020. An artificial evolution, while the labor market was strongly affected by the confinements. It then jumped to 9%, over the following three months, before falling one point below at the end of 2020. It has since fallen gradually, falling below the 7.5% mark at the end of 2021, driven by flourishing activity, and has stagnated. since above 7%.
If it is almost the lowest rate for more than forty years – the second quarter of 1982 -, health crisis aside, this good score does not however satisfy the executive, who repeats at will his hope of soon to reach full employment. “We must aim for an 80% employment rate in the coming years”, thus recently affirmed the Minister of Economy and Finance, Bruno Le Maire, on the sidelines of the economic meetings in Aix-en-Provence. .
The government is counting in particular on the establishment of France travail to accelerate the decline in unemployment. However, the experts are cautious, recalling that the downturn in the economy, the rise in rates, inflation and the weakening of consumption will eventually weigh on activity and employment. In June, the Banque de France was thus counting on a rate established at 7.1% this year, before rising to 7.6% at the end of 2025. Same observation for INSEE, which expects job creations fewer by the end of 2023. “Given the expected slowdown in employment […], the unemployment rate would remain stable at 7.1% of the active population until the end of 2023 “, write the statisticians, in their latest note on the situation. Crossing the 7% level would, in itself, be a small feat, and unheard of since the first seven-year term of François Mitterrand, in 1981.
