In 2025, the public employment service will experience a small revolution. With the entry into force of the law on full employment, 1.2 million unemployed people who were until now off the radar are, from January 1, automatically registered with France Travail (formerly Pôle emploi). The objective: to establish a « diagnostic global » pour “offer personalized follow-up”, according to the National Council for Statistical Information (Cnis), author of an evaluation of the consequences of this measure.
In fact, this new feature concerns all RSA beneficiaries and their spouses, but also young people supported by a local mission as well as people with disabilities monitored by Cap emploi. Until now, only 40% of the 2 million RSA beneficiaries were registered with France Travail.
Coordination of integration assistance structures
Once counted, these job seekers will be advised and directed towards the professional integration organization best able to support them. This is the other great novelty of the law on full employment: all the structures which, in France, play a role in helping the unemployed – France Travail, the local missions and Cap emploi, therefore, but also departments or specialized associations – will coordinate.
To give all new registrants time to be guided towards an employment support organization, a “ transition period » of two years is planned. A deadline that is all the more crucial for the application of the measure as any person who makes a request for RSA or who approaches a local mission from January 1 also joins the list of those registered with France Travail.
Two new categories
The reform also results in the creation of two new categories of job seekers at France Travail. To the traditional categories A, B, C, D and E are now added the F (dedicated to those who experience numerous obstacles to employment and are oriented towards a “social career”) and the G (which brings together people in waiting for orientation). As a reminder, the distribution into categories A, B, C, D and E depends on the obligation or not to look for work and the availability of people, in particular the question of whether or not they worked the previous month.
The question of obstacles to professional integration concerns a majority of RSA beneficiaries. In 2018, two thirds of them were hampered in their job search. Among the causes: housing or transport difficulties, health problems or even family constraints. «In these caseswrites the Cnis, the support offered will be oriented towards social integration, with no obligation to actively seek employment.»
7.1 million job seekers
With this update, France Travail now has an almost exhaustive overview of the number of people of working age who are unemployed, whether they are active or not. This represents a total of 7.1 million people compared to 5.9 million before the reform. According to the Cnis, such data makes it possible to «better target support policies» but also to evaluate “scale and effectiveness” operations carried out by the public employment service.
Thus, although the unemployment figures measured by the Ministry of Labor using data from the former Pôle Emploi are inflating, the unemployment rate measured by INSEE should not experience similar developments. This is in fact based on the criteria of the International Labor Office (ILO) and serves as a reference for discussing employment in the public debate.
No direct impact on INSEE figures
«Being registered with France Travail does not in itself constitute a criterion for defining unemployment within the meaning of the ILO.», declares INSEE, which uses a survey to establish its statistics. No mechanical effect, therefore, but a possible indirect consequence of this reform since it is supposed to stimulate “active search” of a job, which is none other than one of the ILO's criteria for defining unemployment.
However, INSEE warns: to assess the impact of this measure on the unemployment rate in France, we will have to wait until May 2025 and the publication of the figures relating to the first quarter of the new year. The latest survey, published in mid-November, estimated the unemployment rate at 7.4% of the active population.
