Sep 03
What figures to understand unemployment?
Unemployment according to ILO, many job seekers Class A, B or C, accounting for inactive or underemployed … It is sometimes difficult to know how to grasp the reality of the labor market among the many available indicators . And especially since there is no single statistic that alone would get a fair picture of the market at time t. "Sticking to a single figure would give a partial picture," says Jerome Gautié, professor of economics at the Sorbonne and author of "unemployment" in the collection Landmarks. How, then, to find it?
Of the two indicators most commonly taken include unemployment as defined in International Labour Office (ILO), published this week by INSEE, and the number of jobseekers registered at employment center.These two statistics cover between them most of the number of unemployed at a given time.
• Used internationally, unemployment according to ILO calculated by INSEE based on criteria more closely than the figures of employment center. It is also the result of an investigation, not an administrative accounting. Only people who have not worked even one hour during the survey week, and actively seeking employment are considered unemployed according to ILO. This definition therefore excludes all persons working part time but wanting to find a job, and those who are discouraged. In the second quarter, unemployment on the ILO definition was 9.3% of the population in metropolitan France, 2.6 million people and 9.7% with departments overseas.
• In turn, job seekers registered at employment center are divided into five categories (see definitions). In these five, "they better reflect the labor market," Judge Jerome Gautié. Published before unemployment on the ILO definition, these figures also have more influence on the markets, said Dominique Barbet, economist at BNP Paribas.
Category A is close to the ILO definition in that it includes the unemployed out of work required to make an active search. However, if this category is the most frequently raised in the publication of figures from the employment center, it is not sufficient to account for the situation of the labor market because it excludes, as unemployment in the sense ILO, a large number of job seekers."With the development of long-term obligation to seek additional income, nearly 40% of those registered at employment center that is now on the margins of statistical category A," suggests Stephen Jugnot, statistician economist.
In July 2010, for example, 2,676,000 people were listed as category A in France, against nearly 4 million into categories A, B and C, which cover all unemployed have an obligation to search for jobs, even those who are partial activity. The inclusion of these three categories can have an idea of the extent of under-employment in France. The number of job seekers amounted to 4.5 million last all categories, classes D and E including persons not required to do a job search.
• But these figures are still struggling to explain a phenomenon: the "halo of unemployment."It covers people who want work but are not counted in unemployment on the ILO definition because they are not looking for a job or are not available. The discouraged unemployed people contribute significantly to the "halo of unemployment." "Some of these unemployed are among the discouraged job seekers of employment center, but not all," says Jerome Gautié. INSEE identifies therefore, in part, the people who make up the halo. In a publication of October 2009, it identifies and 770.000 inactive wish to work.
• What frequency remember? Variations on a monthly basis the number of jobseekers are not always significant. "We must be careful with this data, in particular whether they are raw or seasonally adjusted.Overall, only the trends for three consecutive months are considered to be significant, "says Jerome Gautié.
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