Unemployment, Fabien Roussel
Unemployment, work period required to qualify for benefits: Repeal the unemployment insurance reforms (back to 4 months' work)
Direction of change: decrease, 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).
« une augmentation générale des salaires, leur indexation sur les prix, l’abrogation des réformes de l’assurance-chômage et la construction d’une sécurité d’emploi et de formation »1Translation by the editorsa general increase in wages, their indexation to prices, the repeal of the unemployment insurance reforms and the construction of an employment and training security system
PCF, « Chômage à 8,3 % : l'argent public doit servir l'emploi, pas les licenciements » (communiqué), 9 August 2026. Position taken from a document of the candidate’s party or movement, not from a presidential programme.
No programme released. Positions taken from public statements, words of associates or documents of the candidate’s party, each dated and sourced; last recorded on 18 October 2026.
Encoding
No cost-schedule parameter for this position: see the costing for the reason.
Costing
Announced by the candidate
not announced
The cited source does not cost this measure.
Published costings
none
No external costing of this position recorded to date.
Our calculation
not costed
Reading adopted, the same as for La France insoumise and Les Écologistes: the repeal of the unemployment insurance reforms includes the eligibility condition tightened in 2019 (6 months of work out of 24 instead of 4 out of 28). Its cost is counted in the repeal of the 2019-2021 reform, costed under the “Benefit amount and tapering” lever: no second costing here.
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.
- PCF, « Chômage à 8,3 % : l'argent public doit servir l'emploi, pas les licenciements » (communiqué), 9 August 2026. Position taken from a document of the candidate’s party or movement, not from a presidential programme. Read the source (PCF, « Chômage à 8,3 % : l'argent public doit servir l'emploi, pas les licenciements » (communiqué)).
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