Kiosk 360. A fall in trompe-l’oeil according to INSEE which indicates that the unemployment rate fell by 0.7 point in the second quarter, to 7.1%. The details.
While Emmanuel Macron has set himself the goal of achieving an unemployment rate within the meaning of the ILO of 7% at the end of his five-year term, INSEE announced on August 20 that it had fallen to 7, 1% in the second quarter, down 0.7 point after a decline of 0.4 point in the first quarter, emphasizes lesechos.fr in one of its August 20 publications, adding that this corresponds to 2 million unemployed, a figure down from 271,000.
According to INSEE, this fall in “trompe-l’oeil” is even more important than in the first quarter. The institute points out, in fact, that it does not reflect an improvement in the labor market but an effect of confinement of unemployed people which outweighs the effect of the increase in the number of unemployed people.
Lesechos.fr underlines that the indicator of the unemployment rate within the meaning of the ILO, which the executive had decided shortly after the election of Emmanuel Macron to make its compass, is unable to give the measure of the impact of the crisis on unemployment for an easily understandable reason, especially since this thermometer measures people who are certainly unemployed, but who are actively seeking employment.
“Forbidden to travel, aware of the lack of prospects in an economy at a standstill, many of the unemployed considered that they could not be in the context. With the exception, however, of young people, whose unemployment rate increased by 1.8 points, perhaps because some considered that if they were prevented from looking for a job, they nevertheless had the will ”, decrypts l ‘Insee in its study.
This is also why the newspaper indicates that to measure the reality of the situation, it is necessary to turn to another concept: the evolution of what is called the “halo of unemployment”. Thus, with this concept, we notice that the number of people who wish to work without being considered unemployed jumped by 767,000 in the second quarter, after increasing by 44,000 in the first. “The share of the halo in the 15-64 year old population thus increased by 1.9 points over the quarter (+2.2 points over one year), to 6%, its highest level since INSEE measures it ( 2003) ”, indicates the institute.
It should be noted that since January 1, the French economy has destroyed more than 600,000 jobs, according to the same source. “At the same time, unsurprisingly, given the unfavorable context for the labor market, the employment rate of active workers continued to decline, particularly among young people where it reached an all-time low, which confirms that those under 25 are particularly affected by the crisis, ”also indicates INSEE.
However, we learn that there are two signs of resumption of activity after confinement pointed out in the methodological note accompanying the publication of the unemployment rate. These are partial unemployment, which concerned nearly a quarter of people in employment in April 2020, and which fell sharply at the end of the second quarter of 2020 and the hourly volume of work per person, which decreased in April 2020 until ‘at -40% over one year, and which returned to a level barely lower than in 2019 at the end of the quarter.
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