This underconsumption is not an isolated case

Partial unemployment will have played an important role of damper of crisis last year. Quarterly statistics from Insee on the nine first months of the year the left suggests. This is confirmed by the review 2009 of the social investment fund yesterday presented to the Steering Committee of the Fund, chaired by the Secretary of State for employment Laurent Wauquiez, and composed of representatives of the social partners and the administration. This Fund announced on 18 February 2009 by Nicolas Sarkozy and installed April 10's mission is to "coordinate the efforts in favour of employment and training made by the State and the social partners in the fight against the crisis".

Dashboard $ 77.6 million the number of hours consumed between January and December last at a cost of EUR 319 million. At the end of October, the counter stopped at 63.5 million hours ("Les Echos" of December 3). This means that the curve has not followed that of unemployment, which growth is slowed and reversed over the last months of the year. These amounts correspond, according to the dashboard of the Fiso, a range of 705.000 to 887.000 "supported individual" from January to December. Unable to infer however a number of relevant employees because one person can have supported more than once in partial unemployment.

Bonus of 500 euros

The dashboard are only partial unemployed 21.049 trained. But, says in the entourage of Laurent Wauquiez, this figure does not cover the whole of the phenomenon, knowing that in the only metallurgy, 50,000 persons were concerned and that the national fund for employment is also reached. The number of beneficiaries of the premium of 500 euros for the unemployed did not quite work for compensation remains low (30,000). The dashboard however said a "very strong rise in charge of the device on December", with an increase of 52 of the persons concerned.

Large margins of manoeuvre

The dashboard also tracks the number of alternating contracts concluded since the creation of the Fiso: 219.586 apprenticeship contracts and 94.429 contracts of professionalization. More generally, the Ministry of labour made public yesterday the whole of the year 2009 statistics. The decline was ultimately limited to 8 for the new alternating contracts (at 422.000). This average covers contrasting situations: a decrease of 3 of apprenticeship contracts (281.000 signed in 2009) and 18 for contracts of professionalization (141,000).

The balance sheet of the Fiso is also fuel the debate on the unemployed at the end of rights to unemployment insurance. It shows a failure of the end of training allowance (AFF), who takes over from the unemployment benefits in case of exhaustion of rights in-training. This provision, co-financed by the State and Unedic, received last year to 12.578 people, or almost half of the previous years. Result: the State did spend that EUR 21 million, when it had planned to affect 80 device. This underconsumption is not an isolated case. It will therefore remain of major financial margins of manoeuvre for this year. The Fiso was equipped with EUR 2.7 billion for 2009-2010.