Employment, unemployment, earned income 2017 Edition
In this second edition of INSEE Références Employment, unemployment, earned income, INSEE and the Official Statistical Service present a set of analyses and indicators covering the labour market. More information is available only in French on the French pages of the website.
Main changes in the labour market in the last ten years
Employment and Earnings Department
As a result of the economic crisis that began in mid-2007, employment declined, reaching its lowest level of the decade in 2009. From 2010 it returned to moderate growth, driven by economic activity and the increased growth in jobs thanks to measures to reduce the cost of labour. Since 2013, it has once again exceeded its 2007 level, and in the last two years its recovery has been sustained by payroll employment.
However, the share of under-employment has increased, especially in 2008 and 2009. Among employees, the share of the occupied labour force with an open-ended contract declined between 2007 and 2016 after a decade of stability, with three quarters of this decline going to fixed-term contracts. Multiactivity has grown, especially with the effect of the creation of auto-entrepreneur status. Part-time work among men has increased, although this still affects four times fewer men than women (7.7% versus 30.4% in 2016 in France, excluding Mayotte).
Since 2007, the labour force participation rate has risen overall. The composition of the labour force has changed: the labour force participation rate of 15-24 year-olds, which was similar to that of 55-64 year-olds in 2007, has declined since 2009, while that of 55-64 year-olds has increased considerably, linked with successive pension reforms and early retirement schemes.
In 2016, the annual unemployment rate in France decreased (excluding Mayotte) for the first time since 2009. Nevertheless, it was still 2.1 points higher than the 2007 rate. Over ten years, long-term unemployment increased, but has been virtually stable since 2014. Finally, in Metropolitan France, the share of people aged 15 to 64 in the halo of unemployment has increased by 0.7 points since 2007.
Earned income rose again in 2014, both in the private sector and in the local civil service and the hospital civil service, and both for employees and for the “traditional” self-employed, after four years of stability or decline. In the State civil service, however, the fall continued, because of the rise in the number of employees on assisted contracts.