L'indemnisation du chômage : un système à réformer ?

The French system of unemployment benefit is unsuitable and should be reformed, according to Chantal Euzéby.
The system was created in a period of full employment, and indeed it has been through two reforms (in 1984 and 1992): the first made a distinction between the insurance element (the “Assedics”) and “national solidarity” element (allocations specifically to maintain the income of the less fortunate and to help them find jobs); the second aimed to prevent further growth of expenditures on benefits. Yet as a result, the system was no less unfair (more than half the unemployed do not qualify for benefit) and unsuitable, offering too few incentives to seek work, especially in the context of current changes in the labour market, with the growth in insecure temporary, part-time jobs…
The author therefore stresses the need to reform the French unemployment benefit system, so as to make it fairer, to adapt it to cope with the moves from job-to-job now expected, to voluntary social work, and to improve the incentives to seek work. This would mean reassessing the division into insurance and income supplement branches, in order especially to provide better cover against risks, above all for the most vulnerable people, and job opportunities for the unskilled.