Unemployment, Bruno Retailleau
Unemployment, work period required to qualify for benefits: June 2024 rules applied, recharging of rights raised to 9 or 12 months
Direction of change: increase, compared with current law.
The lever. Minimum period of work, over a reference period, required to receive unemployment benefit. Direction rule: ↑ longer work period required (more restricted access).
« Appliquer les règles de juin 2024, votées et jamais mises en œuvre, et les compléter […] La période minimale de rechargement des droits sera portée à neuf ou douze mois »1Translation by the editorsApply the June 2024 rules, voted and never implemented, and supplement them […] The minimum period for recharging entitlements will be raised to nine or twelve months
Encoding
| Parameter | Current law | Programme | Effective date or horizon |
|---|---|---|---|
| Work period required to open entitlement | 6 months | 8 months* (outside the range measured by the source: linear extrapolation) (assumption by the editors, see the costing) | Full year, €bn per year, in 2021 euros |
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The programme does not cost this measure.
Published costings
none
No external costing of this position recorded to date.
Our calculation
+€0.8bn* (outside the range measured by the source: linear extrapolation)
per year for the public accounts, saving, range +€0.6bn to +€1bn.
* Outside the range measured by the source: linear extrapolation (measured range: 4 to 6 months).
The calculation
- Work period required to open entitlement: (8 − 6) ÷ -1 = -2 times “1 month less of required affiliation (between 6 and 4 months), for all new claimants (excluding first-time entrants, already at 5 months)”, each a cost of €0.4bn (0.3 to 0.5). Proposed value outside the range measured by the source: linear extrapolation (measured range: 4 to 6 months). Range measured by Unédic: move from 4 to 6 months (estimate of March 2021). Outside this interval, linear extrapolation, flagged as such.
Assumption by the editors. Partial costing. Reading adopted: « appliquer les règles de juin 2024 » [“apply the June 2024 rules”] means, for access, their condition of 8 months' work in the last 20 months to open entitlement, instead of 6 months in 24 today; beyond 6 months (range measured by Unédic, 4 to 6 months), linear extrapolation. The coefficient (Unédic, March 2021) is applied to current law without updating, as for the repeals of the 2019-2021 reform costed for other candidates. Not costed: the reference period reduced from 24 to 20 months, which tightens access further, and the minimum period for recharging entitlement raised to 9 or 12 months. The 15-month maximum duration under the same rules is costed under the “duration” lever.
Coefficient calculated by the editors from Unédic, « Impact de l'évolution des règles d'assurance chômage au 1er juillet 2021 » (estimations de mars 2021), page 7 du PDF: the position is marked as an assumption by the editors.
Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule
Current law. Qualifying for benefits requires 6 months of work (130 days or 910 hours) in the last 24 months, 36 months from age 55. This rule comes from Decree No. 2019-797 of 26 July 2019 and was renewed by the agreement of 15 November 2024. Before 2019: 4 months out of 28. Since 1 April 2026, first-time claimants (people who have received no benefit in the past 20 years) qualify with 5 months of work (108 days or 758 hours) in the last 24 or 36 months (Act No. 2025-989 of 24 October 2025, provisions approved by order of 28 March 2026): €100m in 2026, €130m per year once fully phased in from 2027 (Unédic).
Horizon. Full year, €bn per year, in 2021 euros
Limits. Derived from the Unédic estimate of March 2021: €0.8bn per year at steady state for raising the qualifying-employment condition from 4 to 6 months, divided by two months. Returning to 4 months out of 28 costs about €0.8bn. The 2021 figure is not updated: unemployment and the SMIC have changed since, and the 2023 countercyclicality reduces the duration of entitlements. Benchmark under 2026 law: lowering the condition by one month for first-time claimants only costs €0.13bn per year (Unédic), much less than the coefficient, which applies to all entrants. « Net » convention: Unédic presents its reduced spending for 2021 and 2023 together with the funding of claimants' supplementary pensions (a flow to Agirc-Arrco, between general government bodies); for the 2019-2021 reform, the share of this flow is not isolated and could not be removed.
- Unédic, « Impact de l'évolution des règles d'assurance chômage au 1er juillet 2021 » (estimations de mars 2021), page 7 du PDF, 2021-04: « Mesures Moindres dépenses liées à la réforme, en M€ En 2021 En 2022 Régime de croisière* […] Condition minimale d’affiliation à 4 mois, puis à 6 mois pour les pertes d’emploi à partir du 1er janvier 2022 (majorant) ou au-delà de 2022 (minorant) 0 [0 – 730]** 800 »
- Unédic, « Assurance chômage : une condition d'accès assouplie pour les primo-entrants », 2026-04-01: « A compter du 1er avril 2026, les salariés privés d’emploi, indemnisés pour la première fois par l’Assurance chômage, peuvent bénéficier de l’ARE […] s’ils justifient de 5 mois de travail (108 jours travaillés ou 758 heures travaillées) dans les 24 ou 36 derniers mois précédant leur fin de contrat de travail. »
- Unédic, « Impact de la mesure relative aux demandeurs d'emploi primo-entrants » (avril 2026), pages 1 et 2 du PDF, 2026-04-01: « Mécaniquement, les dépenses d’indemnisation augmenteront également, de 130 M€ par an en régime de croisière, soit une hausse d’environ 0,4 %. […] Impact financier 100 M€ 130 M€ »
- CMS Francis Lefebvre, La convention d'assurance chômage est agréée, 2024-12: « La réduction de la condition d'affiliation à 5 mois pour les demandeurs d'emploi n'ayant pas bénéficié d'une précédente ouverture de droits au cours des 20 dernières années […] nécessite une base légale »
How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.
- Projet Retailleau, mesure n°29 « Réduire les durées et plafonner les allocations chômage ». Read the programme page.
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