Posted Sep 29, 2022, 6:34 PM
Apprenticeship, which combines education and professionalization, is incomparably effective for the integration of young people into employment. The 2018 reform made the system more readable, increased incentives for employers and apprentices, and unlocked the training offer with, as a result, a historic record of 369,000 new contracts signed in 2019. A structural reform model .
Mid-2020, the time, uncertain, ordered not to be watchful. This is why the recovery plan has added exceptional aid for hiring an apprentice who reaches a level of subsidy never experienced in the past, even for the so decried subsidized non-market employment schemes: 100% salary subsidized for most apprentices and companies, regardless of the diploma prepared, without social or tax deductions.
It is above all learning in higher education that has been boosted while these profiles fit very well without subsidy.
The enthusiasm exceeded all expectations: 531,000 new apprentices in 2020, 733,000 contracts signed and 900,000 young people in the process of learning in 2021, a jump in youth employment. On the downside, apprentices preparing for a baccalaureate or lower diploma, for whom apprenticeship is the most effective in terms of integration, remained on the sidelines of this explosion (+14% of contracts compared to 2018), and it is above all apprenticeship in higher education that has been boosted (+189%) while these profiles fit very well into employment without subsidy.
A bonus that has become addictive
With such results, the exceptional aid has become addictive, renewed three times when the labor market leaping from record to record did not justify it. And now the objective is one million apprentices (with only 800,000 individuals per generation…), an increase of 40% in entries. It won’t happen on its own. Opening learning to all ages is a short-term expedient, so should exceptional aid be increased?
The reality must be faced: either the growth in apprenticeship observed since 2020 can be explained by the reform and not by this exceptional aid, or this bonus boosts at a high price the integration into employment of young people whose diploma allows easy insertion without assistance. In both cases, this exceptional aid is inefficient.
The reduction in airfoil is also inevitable from a budgetary point of view, because in the current state, without even speaking of an extension, the total cost of this measure will reach several tens of billions of euros.
Go back to the 2018 reform
A timid withdrawal maneuver seems to be under way, but from the wrong end: France’s skills deficit, which obviously results from the quantity (number of apprentices), but which we are trying to reduce through the price (level of payment of training by work-study funds). The State thus hopes to reduce the deficit of its operator – which it must make up for – while not renouncing the political benefits of the exceptional bonus which is widening it: it is obvious that if State public aid continues to boost inflows , France’s skills deficit will persist.
Targeting the consequences rather than their cause undermines the well-built balance of the 2018 reform. In order not to damage this reform, the expensive and useless exceptional aid should be abolished. There is nothing to reinvent, just go back to the unique aid created in 2018, targeted at training below or equal to the baccalaureate.
Entry into apprenticeships will return to a healthier cruising speed, certainly much higher than it was in 2018. Obviously, we will have to assume that we have to give up on the million target and that the employment of young people artificially supported by this bonus declines a little.
