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FRANCE: Young Face a Jobless Future

PARIS, Mar 19 2009 (IPS) - Carole is an 18-year-old student of African descent at a high school in central Paris. She is currently studying for the baccalauréat, an exam at the end of secondary school. When she graduates, she would like to leave France as soon as possible, preferably for the United States.

“There aren’t many prospects here for young people like me,” she says. “I don’t think I’ll be able to get a job.” Her friend Yassine agrees. “When you apply for work here, employees always say they will call you back, but they never do.”

Yassine, too, thinks the United States will be a better option. “With Barack Obama now president, there will be more opportunities for us,” she says. But her quiet laughter betrays her uncertainty.

Both Carole and Yassine, and most of their friends, have tried many times to find part-time jobs during the holidays and after school to “help out” their parents, but they have become discouraged by the lack of success.

There are many more like them. France has one of the highest youth unemployment rates among developed countries, with more than 20 percent of those aged 15 to 24 unable to find work, according to figures from the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of 30 wealthy nations.

Among the poorest segments of the population, and especially the immigrant communities, that figure is nearly double, a situation that some sociologists say is partly to blame for the riots that erupted across the country in 2005.

France’s National Institute for Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) released figures last week showing that about a quarter of the 2.2 million unemployed people in France are younger than 25. The national unemployment rate recently rose to 7.8 percent after two years of decline, with some 117,300 jobs lost in metropolitan areas of the country in the fourth quarter of 2008.

The youth unemployment rate in the United States, where Carole and Yassine think they can achieve their dreams, has risen in the past year from 11 to 14 percent for those aged 15 to 24, according to the OECD. The U.S. unemployment rate in January was 7.6 percent.

Attending university helps to delay the job search, but students in their final year of high school in France are already worried about a future that might bring joblessness, especially in the current international economic crisis.

This led the National Union of Students of France (UNEF) to call for “massive” participation in a second day of nationwide strikes Thursday, following an earlier strike this year. Large numbers are reported to have taken to the streets.

“We want the government to stop cutting state jobs such as in the teaching profession,” UNEF spokesperson Juliette Griffond told IPS. “Many young people want to become teachers, for instance, but there are fewer posts for them.”

She added that students also want the government to provide financial assistance for young people while they embark on the difficult search for employment.

“In the face of the ongoing crisis, we expect the government to protect young people from the increase in unemployment which particularly affects 18-to- 25-year-olds,” said Griffond, herself a 26-year-old university student, and who expects to start looking for a job in a year or two.

But the unemployment rate in most countries including France is expected to continue to rise in the next 18 months, and globally some 210 million people will be unemployed in 2009, up from 190 million a year ago, according to the International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Those most affected will be young people, immigrants, low-skilled and older workers, the ILO says. In Spain, for instance, youth unemployment was 29 percent at the end of last year, and is predicted to increase in 2009.

Government ministers are trying to find ways to tackle the problem, but in France the situation is complicated by the very laws that are meant to protect employees. It is difficult to fire people once they have a full-time contract and have worked a number of years, so employers tend to give young people only temporary contracts.

Dismissals generally cost employers a month’s salary for every year that the employee has been hired, and the amount goes up significantly after 15 years of employment, according to France’s largest employers union, the Mouvement des Entreprises de France (MEDEF).

Many companies prefer to keep under-performing workers on their payroll rather than face this cost, one employer told IPS. The result is that there is less turnover in the job market here than in some other countries.

Furthermore, the government recently announced, to much criticism, that it plans to increase the compulsory retirement age from 65 to 70, meaning that employers would not be able to force workers to leave before age 70. One result of this might be fewer job openings for younger people.

Official steps to lessen youth unemployment have not had much success over the past few years. In 2006, then prime minister Dominique de Villepin proposed a law that would produce flexible contracts for young employees, making it easier to hire as well as fire them, but after thousands of university students demonstrated for two months against the measure, the legislation was withdrawn. No one in the current government seems keen to revive it.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who showed little sympathy for young demonstrators when he was interior minister, calling them “hoodlums”, says he is taking steps to improve the situation. Last month he announced new benefits for unemployed youth, including the backing of a proposal by trade unions to create a 3 billion euro fund for job re-training, with the state providing half of the financing.

MEDEF, the employers union, has also launched initiatives to help skilled young people, including holding business information weeks at schools and supporting apprenticeship programmes, said spokesperson Isabelle Mariano.

“We’ve done a whole range of things to help students and youth with diplomas,” Mariano told IPS. “Students can do a stage (internship) in companies and get to know the job market, for instance.”

But student and trade unions do not believe that these and other recently announced government measures are sufficient to protect workers, both young and old, and the strike Thursday was an attempt to force the government as well as employers to do more.

Some young people like Carole and Yassine do not think the nationwide action will achieve much for them. They are still looking forward to emigrating and pursuing what they call the “rêve Américain”, the American dream.