Every month, official unemployment figures are listed under three separate categories, A, B, and C. The official total jobless numbers cited most often is category A - people without any working activity – while those who work a minimal number of hours but who earn well below part-time pay, are in categories B and C, a section of the population largely forgotten by politicians and the broad media.
In reality, all three categories represent those who have no job to speak of, and who live in precarious financial and social situations. Mediapart met up with four people representative of each section, and who recount how finding employment is a daily, and desperate, task.
- Roselyne, who fears sliding into dependence on minimal benefits
We met Roselyne in the south of France. She knows only too well what lies behind the statistics. She is one of the category A unemployed, those who have no work at all in any given month, whether or not they receive unemployment benefit. She also falls within two other continually growing categories, the long-term unemployed and 'seniors', both of which weigh on her CV. Now 57, she was made redundant three years ago from a job as a management assistant for a cultural institution. And she faces a relentless deadline – her unemployment benefit runs out in three months' time, and she will have to depend on the Revenu de Solidarité Active, or RSA, a basic benefit worth 524 euros a month for a single person aged over 25 without dependent children. So the situation is urgent.
Enlargement : Illustration 1
It is easy to see that Roselyne is both meticulous and tenacious. She has created an impressive Excel file recording all her attempts to find a job, containing several thousand job offers with the relevant contact details, the stage the application has reached and the follow-ups needed, all colour-coded and updated every day for the past three years.
"I spend four to five hours a day just on sorting out the alerts," she says, standing in front of her numerous paper files, arranged in order on a shelf. "I look at the job offers on APEC, Cadremploi, Manpower and Adecco websites, and on Jobup in Switzerland since I also speak German. But most offers go through recruitment agencies." Despite all her efforts, speaking three foreign languages, having an MBA (Master of Business Administration) obtained in 2010 – after she turned 50 – plus solid experience in both public and private sectors, she has not found employment.
She goes through the day's job ads, sitting in front of her computer. There is a part-time post as a management assistant in Quimper, in the Brittany region of north-west France at 1,147 euros a month for 24 hours a week, and another at 910 euros a month at BTS-level (Brevet de Technicien Supérieur, a post-school vocational qualification) in a big industrial company, under a special contract alternating work and study. "That is the competition! Young people, barely out of school, who will accept doing everything from secretarial services to accounting, which allows firms to economise their salary costs." Roselyne is seeking a salary of 1,800 euros a month, even if she often replies to job ads offering lower pay. "I am single, I have to have a roof over my head and, nine years from retirement age, I cannot let my salary fall too much, otherwise it will be a catastrophe," she says.
And even when there is the prospect of a job, the let-down is worse. Last December Roselyne was called for an interview in Bordeaux for a job paid 1,800 euros a month net (after Social Security charges but before tax). National employment office Pôle Emploi met 30 % of the train ticket but she had to pay for a hotel and food herself. She was surprised to learn that the interview took place at the local branch of the French national unemployment agency Pôle Emploi, where there were 35 people from all over France assembled in one room, 11 for the job of management assistant and 23 for a job in Human Resources. "They did a presentation of the company. The managing director was supposed to meet everyone but we didn't see anyone," Roselyne recalls. "What does that mean? Were they going to recruit based on looks? "
There are too many job seekers competing for too few jobs, even if Roselyne is prepared to leave the life and friends she has built up over the past 30 years. "I would be prepared to go to Brittany, to Brest where my brother lives. But I am looking in a wide area, even abroad, in Germany, Switzerland and Britain. I had an offer for a three-month contract in Britain for telephone sales. Unfortunately I can't give up my apartment for three months. But if I were young, I would go. Young people should go," she insists. She is also worried for her son, a piano tuner.
A tall, thin woman, Roselyne seems utterly worn out. Her face is drawn, her back hurts after hours in front of the screen clicking, replying and re-writing her CV again and again, finding justifications for prospective employers for her past three years with no job. "Sometimes I feel totally alone, no longer in the flow. You lose your footing very quickly. Thankfully I have good close friends, but they are not there everyday and not all of them want to witness this. Everyone has their own rhythm and I am no longer in the same one as other people. I am not angry with people, I am angry with the system."
She has been haunted by a fear of falling into decline since she was a child. "I remember very well a book I read when I was small, L’Assommoir [1] in which you see how everything falls apart when you lose the means to live, the poverty that follows, and alcoholism." Her father was in the Merchant Navy, her mother ran a Co-op shop in Brittany, and Roselyne still has the traces of a Brest accent. "I always helped out. For every 100 empty bottles collected I could have a Carambar," she said. "I was an obedient little worker and that left its mark on me. Some people can survive being pushed aside but I can’t because I have been taught that all work should be paid – and vice versa."
1: L'Assommoir by Victor Hugo recounts the extreme poverty and precarious lives of the working class in late 19th-century France.
- Pascal Ouvrard, on the dole after being placed on sick leave, cannot afford to set up his own company
Unemployment has changed Pascal Ouvrard. "In a way I am probably more open than I was before." He lives with his family in the Val d'Oise, a département (county) north of Paris. Now 40, he was laid off from his job as a sales executive in September 2015 and is still eligible for unemployment benefit for several months more. He is also in category A, with no work at all, but is optimistic that he will find another job. "I have been a driver, a ready-to-wear salesman, a shop manager and a sales executive,” he says. “I can do lots of things. In the worst case we will sell the house or the car.”
Pascal is unusual in having an obsessive interest in politics. He is fearful of the far-right, and as a self-confessed supporter of former conservative president Nicolas Sarkozy he says he cried when socialist candidate François Hollande beat Sarkozy in the 2012 presidential elections. "I saw people around me who wanted more social policy, and look where we are today. I was right, this guy is completely off the wall," he exclaims. Yet his analysis of the world of work is very different from that put forward by Sarkozy. "Unemployment isn't our fault. Nowadays you can work 15 hours a day, bring money into your firm and be fired the next day."
Enlargement : Illustration 3
Pascal used to work for French glassmaking firm Saint-Gobain, but three years ago he was put in charge of commercial development for the washroom and sanitary technology industry. He was responsible for Île-de-France, the greater Paris region, and for the Val d'Oise, with 10 sales outlets to develop. He would be online checking e-mails from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and spend his days criss-crossing the region, caught in its infamous traffic jams and working relentlessly. In the end he could no longer sleep. In February 2014 he came down with a pulmonary infection. He nevertheless continued his trying work schedule but took three grams of antibiotics a day. And when his doctor put him on sick leave for a month, Pascal resisted. The doctor replied, "It's either that or you croak." And Pascal's affliction was finally given a name: burn-out.
When he was let go a few months later it seemed like a liberation, like being rescued. His marriage was on the verge of breakdown. "I had totally retreated into myself. I did not live any more. I tell you, yes, work kills." His love of a challenge and of work well done coupled with hierarchical pressure had worn out the good solider Pascal. "I started as a delivery driver and I've been working for 20 years. I was born into enterprise, my father and grandfather had a building firm in the Val-d’Oise. As for my mother, she didn't have a penny, and I grew up in those two worlds. But I have the love of enterprise in me and I have a sense of self-worth."
All this energy is coming up against the reality of the labour market. There are a lot of job ads, but often those jobs are already filled and the ads are just left on the websites of recruitment agencies. And with the school-leaving exam, the baccalaureat, as his only qualification, Pascal "never has the right background, the right diploma" as he puts it. His experience, which could be an advantage, can equally put off potential recruiters. Less well paid, more docile youngsters are jostling to get into employment, and some of them have not worked at all for three years after obtaining their qualification.
Just like Roselyne, the salaries Pascal sees on offer are heartbreakingly low. "You have to see it to believe it. I'll never get what I used to earn again. Never mind, it doesn't matter, but thankfully my wife works as well," he says. As a former employee, Pascal has been mulling over the idea of creating his own company. "I contacted the Chamber of Commerce about it. To find a firm that was already turning over I would have needed 100,000 euros. I don't have that. Even for a franchise I need to find at least 50,000 euros. Wanting to find a way out isn't everything. You also need to have the resources."
- Claire Pochet, exam marker, private teacher and animal-sitter
Claire Pochet is not very clear in which category she finds herself. Probably in ‘B’ category, given that she regularly works less than 78 hours per month. But in fact she is not particularly interested to know, much like many other jobseekers who have more or less deserted the maze-like public unemployment agency, Pôle Emploi. “I’m still registered with Pôle Emploi because the rules are so complicated that I’m afraid of losing everything if I leave,” she explains. “But I’m not looked after, I don’t receive one centime. I live from what I earn by working.” Which is between 500-600 euros per month.
Claire gives private French-language lessons two or three times per week, and also acts as a exam supervisor, through the intermediary of private companies. From her well-worn black attaché case, she pulls out one of her typical contracts, for a two-hour supervision – which can rise to seven hours during the busy period of school-leaving exams. She tops all this up with marking the school exams of final-year pupils, paid 1.5 euros per piece, looks after dogs and cats, and writes poorly-paid articles for specialist reviews.
“I’ve always done lots and lots of small jobs,” she continues. “Aged 18 it was nice and people thought it was ‘original’. And then, it became a fixture.” She has worked as a secretary in a hospital, then for seven years in a publishing house, and when she was 35 she sat a masters degree in French via a correspondence course. “When I hear people’s reactions to the labour law [reform], I’m very surprised. You’d think that the world has discovered [work] insecurity. I never had the impression that the employment code concerned me. In small firms, I was never paid overtime, and I’ve sometimes signed a contract six months after being hired. I’ve been paid as an auto-entrepreneur [self-employment system with a low ceiling for earnings], under the Agessa system [of copyright earnings], by service employment cheques [a simplified system for private persons to pay for services such as domestic chores]. People talk about Germany or England, but we already have the zero-hour contracts in France.”
A while back, Claire’s parents died within seven months of each other. Deeply affected, she gave up all activity and found herself living off the minimum income for the unemployed, the RSA. “I’ve seen friends being controlled and treated as if they were thieves,” says Claire. “I don’t want people to come to my home and ask me why I have six toothbrushes or a television. I am poor, I’m not a criminal.” So she left the RSA system and, on the rebound, took up a state-subsidised post with an association. “You mustn’t dream, there’s never a job at the end.”
While she is not looking for a job with an open-term employment contract - “I find dealing with routine difficult, it’s true”, she says – Claire is not happy with the insecurity of her working activity. “I refuse to be regarded as unstable, or made to feel guilty because I earn very little,” she adds.
Thanks to her mother, she owns a small flat in Paris. The walls are blistered through the lack of heating, and during the winter she wears “three sets of clothes” to stay warm. She says her social life is poor. “My major worry is to become ill, or to have a seriously hard moment,” she explains.
Clair is an activist for the French National Movement for the Jobless and Financially Insecure. She goes on demonstrations, and every Wednesday looks after the movement’s advice centre for the unemployed, who some with problems such as being struck off the dole or being chased for having received more than they should have in welfare payments. “They leave me in peace because I receive no benefits, but the administration is so violent.” With a high-pitched giggle she adds: “I am financially fragile, but I don’t want to be excluded from life. I have my pride.”
- Nathalie, who teaches French for migrants in a social centre, sees making ends meet next year as 'complicated'
The unemployed in Category C are those who work more than 78 hours per month, but who are in insecure employment, and poor. That is the case of Nathalie, who teaches French as a foreign language part-time in a social aid centre in a valley in the eastern Vosges region that is now an industrial wasteland. “When I arrived ten years ago things were already closing down,” she says. “You can’t say things have improved.” Many among the population have left the area, and the available work is above all seasonal.
Nathalie, originally from Paris, arrived in the Alsace region after years of travelling about, when she and her husband bought a large house with enough space for all their children and to live what she calls her “ecologist dream”.
“Like everyone here, to get to work you need a car,” she explains. “And it’s typical, you buy old and inexpensive cars which end up breaking down. It’s a vicious circle. You need to find a permanent thing, but how can you do it? I saw an ad there for paying 90 euros per month [for a loan]. I know that we’ll pay the car two times over that way, that it’s a rip-off, but where’s the solution?”
A mother with a large family, Nathalie used to enjoy part-time work, which she would pick up again after each birth of her children. But now, the family income is too tight. “For us, it’s not a question of whether we will have a holiday or not, it’s not even the issue. It’s more like, shall we put the heating on or not. That’s where we are now.” The expenses are growing, with a daughter in secondary school, a son in his second year of degree studies, another daughter mixing travel and work, and a third daughter, who recently became a mother, employed on a part-time contract in Lyon.
“In our family, there is fortunately a healthy solidarity, and the children are used to getting on with things on their own,” says Nathalie. “We give a bit of help to the boy, who has a grant of 150 euros, so that he can meet his hunger. Next year things are going to be complicated, we’ll have to find an idea.” She admits that her own parents, in their eighties, also help her. “I don’t know, I’d say that with time we’ve become poor workers. But we didn’t hang around with limp arms while profiteering from the system, as the saying goes. We work, but we struggle, that’s not normal.”
So Nathalie now wants to find full-time work, and she has re-registered with the unemployment agency Pôle emploi. “To be frank, I’m given a good follow-up, and as I’m recognised as being a handicapped worker I have access to lots of workshops and training,” she says. “But there are no offers. Public finances have been so reduced, associations and local authorities have no money left to fund French lessons for foreigners. You’d have to go to Marseille, or Paris. I’ve developed at a social level, but I’m 54 years old, with no initial diploma and a path of vocational training. For employers, that represents a lot of handicaps.”
Her husband, 60, a professional cook, was recently forced to leave the restaurant trade, physically exhausted by so many years in the business. He found a state-subsidised job with a caterer in Strasbourg, 70 kilometres away. “With his 1,500 euros per month it’s impossible to rent a lodging. So he stays there, squatting a bed left and right, and comes home at the weekend,” explains Nathalie.
Living the logistical life of a student at the age of 60 is not an isolated case. There are now 3.5 million people without work in France, and another 1.8 million with small jobs, making up a total of 5.4 million people who are either jobless or under-employed.
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- The French version of this article can be found here.
English version by Sue Landau and Graham Tearse