“In the current times, 18 months to find a job is enough,” government spokesman Olivier Véran said on Tuesday of the tightening of conditions for granting unemployment insurance announced on Monday.
“What we want is to tell people: the spirit of unemployment insurance is the spirit of the National Council of the Resistance”, developed Véran on the set of CNews, convinced that the “logic” of the current reform is “guided” by that of time.
“There will be times when people can’t find work because the job market is too tight, so they need to be insured so they don’t lose all of their income,” he explained. “It is normal that when the risk is high, the insurance is strong and when the risk is low, the insurance is a little less strong,” he said.
The government strikes hard
The government struck hard on Monday by announcing a 25% reduction in the length of compensation for all jobseekers’ opening rights from 1 February, a decision deemed “unacceptable” by all unions. The unemployment rate is currently 7.3%. The reform calls for the duration of wages to return to today’s level if the unemployment rate rises above 9% or increases by 0.8 points in a quarter.
When asked about Labor Minister Olivier Dussopt’s wish for “100,000 to 150,000 additional restitutions to work” in 2023 thanks to the reform, the government spokesman estimated that it would be “a fairly direct mechanism indeed, you will see that there will be a mechanism quite massive impact on the labor market because it is also a signal that we are sending ”.
