2023-12-09 12:00:02
VWanting to reform unemployment insurance is always a difficult exercise. Cutting rights, on the other hand, turns out to be a much easier task to justify with some false evidence, and always pays off. But why, in these conditions, not follow this “logic” to the end and eliminate unemployment insurance: wouldn’t full employment be achieved more quickly?
For the moment, there is no general overhaul of the system, but rather a policy of chipping away at rights which concerns the terms of compensation for seniors. The Minister of the Economy wants to reduce the potential duration of compensation for seniors to eighteen months, a 30% cut which would be added to the 25% reduction decided less than a year ago. It doesn’t matter that 40% of unemployment insurance recipients are under 35 years old, and 85% under 55 years old.
Considered too generous by Bercy, the unemployment insurance system is blamed for the low employment rate of seniors. The ace ! This is approaching the problem from the wrong end. Today, seniors are victims of double discrimination, in employment and in hiring. If seniors kept their job, or found one easily, or if, once laid off, they received “reasonable” job offers, they would not use their unemployment insurance rights or not for long, and would not would not have the lowest probability of returning to work among all unemployed people. However, although this discrimination is clearly established, no public policy is implemented to combat it.
Precautionary savings
We must then remember that unemployment insurance is precautionary savings. Shared, it is very redistributive and very economically efficient, for individuals and businesses. Like other unemployed people, seniors are only eligible after having contributed and involuntarily losing their job. The risk of unemployment is less frequent for them but more serious, because very often without remission. Its consequences are all the more noticeable as seniors have generally contributed for many years, and therefore paid dearly for this insurance.
At 60, a senior who has never experienced unemployment has contributed around forty years, therefore around forty months of net salary, or the equivalent of more than sixty months of benefits. Reducing the potential rights to eighteen months, minus 50% in one year, amounts to taxing the precautionary savings of the unemployed by 50%: who would dare such a tax on the Livrets d’épargne populaire (LEP) or Livrets A under the pretext of encouraging employment? The logic, however, is no different.
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