It is the agency that provided the bulk of contingents of unemployed for months

Thirty - six thousand applicants additional employment registered to pole employment in may, it is certainly not good news because they are 36,000 employees of more left on the tile, but somehow, it's a good surprise. Neither the Government nor the economists expected, indeed, if marked deceleration of the unemployment curve. In may, the flow of new net registrations at pole employment was well below that of April (mental). The slowdown is sensitive and regular since the appalling record of January and its 100,000 more unemployed. Most importantly, this overall positive sign is accompanied by three a priori reassuring signals on the employment situation. The first is that the volume of arrivals at pole employment decreased in May to 7. In other words, the effect of scissors between inputs and outputs has been tightened. The second positive indicator is the net flow of entries on the basis of an end of mission of acting ( 14 a month). It is the agency that provided the bulk of contingents of unemployed for months. The third rather encouraging element is the slight decline in entries to pole employment resulting from a termination of contract term (CSD), which included they also among the first victims of the economic crisis.

Even if the may employment figures were, overall, welcomed with caution, they have, to the Government, maintained the hope of relief a little faster and stronger than expected. This hope is not without foundation. It is based on the analysis that the merchant sector companies, instead of having sous-réagi to violent stall of the activity in the fourth quarter of 2008, as was long believed, were, in fact, sur-réagi. And trends in may on the most flexible jobs, such as the acting and the CSD, would be the sign of best expectations of business leaders. Moreover, measures taken for the partial unemployment, since better compensated April and have longer, slow redundancies, proportions kept rising in the image of what is happening in Germany. Finally, from the beginning of July, the rise in charge of some 320,000 youth apprenticeship contracts would cushion the impact of the arrival on the labour market of those coming out this summer in the school system.

Unfortunately, it is feared that this view is too optimistic, that the companies have not sur-réagi and unemployment, the coming months be at least as painful than those that we have to live. Three reasons are to think. First, recent developments of employment and value added suggest that the adjustment of the staff to the situation of the real economy is not complete. In the first quarter, over a year, employment of non-financial corporations fell by 2, the added value of 3, productivity having the difference. Head of the Department of the environment to the Insee, Eric Dubois is convinced that there will still be adjustment of employment, even if economic prospects are less bad in the second to the first quarter. Indeed, in 1993, the destruction of positions had continued until the end of the year, after the recession in the second quarter. Then, many backup of employment plans committed since the beginning of 2009 should produce their effects in the second half, once past the legal and regulatory implementation times.

Finally, the deceleration of the rise in unemployment in May is probably a sign that layoffs are now the core hard labour, stable jobs and indefinite that it is difficult to remove as many and as fast as more precarious jobs. Chief Economist at HSBC, Mathilde Lemoine calculates that the acting is already more than 40 of the destruction of positions in the first quarter of 2009, compared to 80 on the last three quarters of 2008. Moreover, the number of resignations and that of the times of employment are diving, which reflects a more rigid labour market.

Not only the unemployment curve should not continue to influence but it should not change the always stiff slope from the destroyed jobs. The Insee expects always 127,000 net deletions of posts in the last quarter, not so much less than the first (174.000). The only novelty is that the monthly increase in the number of job seekers no longer reflects only imperfectly, in attenuated, degradation of the labour market. This is the translation of what economists call the "effect of bending", a phenomenon which encourages potential assets, in the absence of any hope of working, to not declare job search. In the coming months, the curve of employment to be followed, it will say more than that of unemployment.