Reports critical of the new public employment service

Reform of the French public employment service resulted in the merger of Assédic, the agency responsible for paying benefits to the unemployed, with the National Employment Agency (ANPE), the public service for supporting jobseekers. The merger created ‘Pôle emploi’, a single agency responsible for benefits and jobseeker support. Three years on, reports highlight the difficulties faced by the new agency as it attempts to improve and simplify services for jobseekers.

Background

At the beginning of 2011, the General Inspectorate of Finances published the first report examining Pôle emploi, the new public employment service.

The document (in French, 11.8Mb PDF) aims to compare the role and performance of similar services in Germany, France and the UK. The principal finding is that the number of staff in the new French agency tasked with supporting jobseekers is clearly lower: 71 employees (full-time equivalent) per 10,000 unemployed as defined by the International Labour Organization (ILO), compared to 113 in the UK and 150 in Germany.

The resulting ratio of one advisor to 140 unemployed clients is more than twice the size of the original target of one to 60.

At the same time, the General Inspectorate of Social Affairs was conducting an initial review of the reform. It completed a report (in French, 2Mb PDF) in September 2010 that was not published until July 2011. This report also concludes that the reform has failed to improve support for the unemployed.

The original aim was to introduce a ‘single registration interview’ system across France by October 2009, offering jobseekers a face-to-face interview with a single advisor to both explain how benefits are paid and give help with finding a job. However, by mid-2010 this had only been fully implemented in one region of France. In addition, the opening hours of the job centres and the telephone helpline are said to be insufficient: less than 35 hours a week, which means that most of the offices are closed one afternoon per week.

Limited effectiveness

The Economic, Social and Environmental Council (CESE) has added its criticisms of these two government departments in its review of the reform of the public employment service.

Its report (in French, 1.7Mb PDF) accepts that this ‘major change for both the users and staff of the new public operator’ took effect at a difficult time, just as the economic crisis began to cause widespread job losses. Nevertheless, its criticism is hard-hitting.

Two years after the merger of the ANPE with [the] Unedic [agency Assédic], when supporting jobseekers back into employment was supposedly an essential mission of the Pôle emploi organisation…the effectiveness of the PES, measured in terms of the return to work of the unemployed, remains limited.

In its 22 recommendations, the CESE demands ‘the implementation of a proper, personal, monthly follow-up’ for jobseekers, which ‘implies [the need for] a significant reduction in the caseloads of Pôle emploi advisors’.

The CESE also observes that ‘access to vocational training by jobseekers still remains inadequate’.

The National Assembly and the Senate have also published their own reports (Assembly report; Senate report part I and part II) that support the merger and encourage reinforcement of ‘the ongoing process of improvement’.

Jobseekers' dissatisfaction

In addition to these reports, there is widespread dissatisfaction among jobseekers who, in 2010, submitted 15,240 complaints to the employment services ombudsman, according to its 2010 report (in French, 385Kb PDF).

Sometimes, the ombudsman finds ‘genuine distress, often stemming from the implementation of complex rules which, in certain cases, it should be possible to apply in a manner which more appropriately responds to individual circumstances’.

In a document entitled Malaise des deux côtés du guichet (in French, 505Kb PDF) (Unease on both sides of the counter), based on personal accounts, the trade union confederation CFDT stresses that the merger of Assédic and the ANPE was conducted in a way that ‘generates unease, or even suffering, for both the users of Pôle emploi and its employees’.

Finally, in a note published last June, the Centre for Strategic Analysis (CAS) makes its contribution by looking elsewhere in Europe for solutions to support jobseekers. Among these solutions, the paper endorses ‘the pivotal role of the advisor, overseeing the provision of appropriate support’, following the example of practices observed in the UK and Germany. It proposes the professionalisation of the advisor's role.

Commentary

All these analyses converge on the need to place the jobseeker at the centre of support provision and to strengthen the support he or she receives. This can be done by reducing the number of unemployed people supervised by each advisor, and by improving the advisors’ training.

Christian Charpy, the present Director General of Pôle emploi, also wants to increase the number of staff employed by the agency.

In a book published in September he recommends employing more staff to improve the supervision of the unemployed and consequently match ‘the best European standards. This is an investment in the future, with an immediate financial return’.

This would require a paradigm shift by a government burdened by a high level of unemployment and a state focused on reducing public deficits, and therefore little inclined to increase the financial resources of the unemployment insurance programme.

Frédéric Turlan, HERA