The controversy over subsidized contracts is growing since Prime Minister Édouard Philippe recently announced that the scheme was “expensive” and “ineffective” for finding employment again.
Subsidized contracts: Cheaper labor, statistics camouflage, no training included?
Some schools had to delay the start of the school year, as in Réunion, where 75% of subsidized contract positions were cut.
The origin of this change was the Court of Audit, which in its latest report, raised concerns about the exorbitant cost and usefulness of these subsidized contracts. Is it a social cushion, a way to obtain cheaper labor for local authorities, a method to artificially lower the unemployment rate, or to help someone distanced from employment find a job? The last measure was the only predominant one, and it can be observed that subsidized contracts did not achieve their objective at all.
Over time, there has certainly been an overlap of all these criteria, but the unemployment rate revealed every month is certainly the most important from the perspective of the image of the effectiveness of the measures implemented by the Government.
In principle, subsidized contracts include mandatory training at the end of the contract to help people find employment, but only 23% actually undergo training. It’s clear that the objective has been distorted, and there is a real discrepancy between what happens in local authorities and in the commercial sector.
Training can be one of the keys to youth employment, provided they are already in the company. What better way to get them in than through apprenticeships and work-study programs! It also puts a “foot in the stirrup” with the possibility of either being employed on-site or more easily finding a “job” elsewhere.
For 33 years, all governments have tried to find solutions to unemployment, especially among young people, without success. On the contrary, the more unemployment increased, the more contract creations followed, and the number of beneficiaries skyrocketed!
And so, after 33 years, we have arrived at an explosive situation. The slightest perceived negative change leads to discontent among local authorities, the national education system, and associations who believe they will no longer be able to manage their responsibilities financially and effectively. Some even cry that we will be “adding unemployment to unemployment”!
In France, we have a State, local authorities, and a national education system very prolific in the number of employees with results that are not always clear in certain activities.
According to the State, the total cost of all subsidized jobs amounted to nearly 4 billion euros in 2016, excluding management. If we add the 500,000 training jobs, with a base cost estimated at 1 billion euros, but 2 billion for the overall cost of the training plan, the total SUBSIDIZED JOBS/TRAINING addition would amount to nearly 5 billion euros per year!
With nearly 57% of public spending, France is ten points above the European average!
Do we continue like this? Are we sure we’re on the right path? Nothing to say?
