Data collected since the 1970s on employment rates and employment conditions – such as wages, job–skills match and type of contract – reveal that economic fluctuations have negatively affected young workers more than other workers. Furthermore, beyond these fluctuations, a significant change has taken place over the 30-year period: young workers, but also newly recruited workers of any age, are increasingly being hired on more precarious employment contracts, such as temporary, part-time or fixed-term contracts. In all, only a quarter of these workers progress to a more stable work status, namely towards permanent full-time employment.
Impact of economic conditions on access to employment
The economic landscape in France clearly impacts on the labour market integration of young people. For instance, young people leaving the educational system in 1982 joined the labour market in an unfavourable economic context and, one year later, only 47% of these young people had a job. At the end of the 1980s, these young people benefited from the favourable economic conditions and their employment rate had increased to 80% after the first seven years of employment.
By contrast, the employment situation evolved differently for young people who completed their education in 1989. They entered the labour market against a favourable economic background, with 56% of this group being employed initially. However, their employment rate increased at a slower rate during the following years, due to the relatively poor economic conditions at the beginning of the 1990s. In fact, their employment rate, six years after entering the labour market, was lower than that of those having completed education in 1982.
Nevertheless, after 10 years in the labour market, the employment rate is more or less the same for young people who entered the job market in the late 1960s right up to those starting work in the 1990s. Thus, in the long term, no significant difference emerges between the generations in terms of access to employment.
Influence on employment conditions
During the 1980s, the proportion of workers with a permanent employment contract in their first year after leaving education declined from 80% in 1980 to 47% in 1988. In economically more favourable periods, such as at the end of the 1980s and over the period 1998–2001, the rate of stable employment for young people increased again to about 60%, but has never attained the level of the early 1980s (see Figure 3 in L’accès des jeunes à l’emploi (in French, 113Kb PDF)).
Moreover, the wages of newcomers in the labour market vary more significantly than those of older workers. Furthermore, the number of young people in a position below their level of qualification changes according to the general economic situation.
It should be noted that the economic impact on the labour market integration of young people has been partially buffered by the public policy of subsidised jobs for people aged under 26 years. At the end of 2004, after 30 years of continuous labour market development, 30% of young workers were in a subsidised job – representing 800,000 jobs, compared with 200,000 jobs in 1975.
Precarious employment affects mainly newcomers
Newcomers on the job market are more frequently in a precarious employment situation: in 2002, 2003 and 2004, over 30% of new workers were on a fixed-term, temporary or subsidised contract. Conversely, these types of contracts concern fewer than 10% of workers who have been more than 10 years in the labour market. A similar gap is found between new and more established workers in relation to involuntary part-time work and job–skills mismatch.
When statistical analysis focuses on all newly hired people, it appears that the gap between entrants to the labour market and older workers taking a new job is not significant. In the private sector, most people are hired on a precarious form of employment contract, irrespective of the work experience of the person recruited. Therefore, the over-representation of young people among job seekers ensures that they experience most of the changing profile of employment contracts, despite the fact that this change generally concerns all new recruits.
Precarious forms of work – such as part-time work and fixed-term, temporary or subsidised employment – used to represent a temporary situation before entering a stable job, namely permanent, full-time employment. Nowadays, the trend is that precarious forms of employment no longer lead to traditional more secure employment. In 2001, only 25% of fixed-term contract and temporary workers had managed to obtain a permanent employment contract after one year in the labour market.
Consequently, over time, the number of people in jobs following the traditional employment pattern tends to decline. Thus, the proportion of stable employment for people who have been working for 10 years has decreased from 97% in 1982 to 87% in 2002.
Source and further information
Fondeur, Y. and Minni, C., ‘L’accès des jeunes à l’emploi (in French, 113Kb PDF)’, Données Sociales: La société française – Édition 2006.
While young workers are generally vulnerable to a precarious employment status, the integration into the labour market of immigrant youth also represents a major problem in France (FR0605019I).
For more information at European level, see the EIRO report Youth at work: /ef/publications/report/2007/undefined/youth-and-work (publication February 2007).
Anne-Marie Nicot, ANACT