Expected 307,000 additional unemployed within two years
A cold shower. Francois Hollande and Jean-Marc Ayrault, the new duo at the head of the executive, could not begin their terms with worse prospects on the employment front. According to the Bureau of Unedic, the unemployment insurance system – that can not be accused of anti-hollandisme since it is composed, for half, representatives of trade unions – the number of registered unemployed in Class A (no activity) should swell to 178,500 in 2012 and then to 128,300 next year. A total of 306,800 additional people in two years, an increase of 10.6% over current levels.
This would be a disaster for the head of state who is committed during the campaign to reverse the unemployment curve, within one year after his election. To revise its forecast of 2012 and first establish financial and employment projections for 2013, services Unedic have incorporated into their models – reliable, in general – the new growth assumptions adopted by the consensus of economists (+ 0 , 3% and +1% of GDP for the current year and the next).
Scenario B more positive
If you look at job seekers who exercised reduced activity (categories B and C), increasing the total number of unemployed in the Hexagon will be even higher than 110,200, representing an increase of 9.7% in two years. Main explanation: the employment should fall further to 91,300 units in two years, bringing to nearly 300,000 the number of jobs destroyed in the Hexagon on the equivalent of a seven-year term. These poor forecasts, if realized, would further aggravate a little hole Unedic whose accumulated deficit frôlerait 18.2 billion euros end 2013. A record.
The new president and his prime minister, however, will find two tiny glimmers of hope in the fifteen pages of notes prediction Unedic. First, the deficit expected in late 2012 was revised downwards (from 1.3 billion euros) compared to recent estimates, established mid-January because of poor advance of revenues and expenditures. Second, the unemployment insurance system has also established a scenario B if growth would be higher in 2012 and 2013 – the bet made by Francois Hollande with the policies he wants to implement.
If the GDP grew by 0.7% this year and 1.4% in 2013, the rising number of unemployed in Class A would be reduced to 169,200 over two years (half that in the central hypothesis) and the economy would begin to create jobs in 2013, with a positive balance of about 53,300 jobs by the end of next year.
The impact on the finances of Unedic would be immediate: the debt would be reduced to 17.2 billion at end 2013, one billion less than the central scenario. A completely different horizon.
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