";s:4:"text";s:3102:"However, given the scale of unemployment in France, more ambitious measures are needed to ensure a substantial and rapid decline in structural unemployment when the recovery gathers pace. The latest report on the SMIC by Ministère du Travail shows that the number of people being paid the SMIC has risen over the last five years. However, this could be because the cost to the employer of employing someone at a wage of the SMIC plus employers’ taxes is well above market clearing rate.
The existence of the youth minimum wage means that, in absolute terms, it is cheaper for an employer to employ an 18 year old in the Netherlands or Belgium than in France, although the full minimum wage is higher in the former countries (There is, therefore, considerable evidence that the minimum wage in France is high by international standards, especially for the young. A few of these factors are examined in this section.France does not seem out of line with regard to the minimum waiting period before the receipt of benefits; as in many other industrial countries, there is no minimum period. In the cointegrating vector for the real wage, all of the estimated coefficients have the expected signs and are of plausible magnitudes. There are three mechanisms for revising the SMIC: (a) a rise of 2 percent or more in the consumer price index automatically triggers an equivalent rise in the SMIC; (b) on 1 July every year the SMIC is revised by at least half of the increase in the real hourly wages in industry; and (c) the government can raise the SMIC at its discretion. The government also intends to double the number of places on apprenticeship programs and to reduce the qualifying age from 16 to 14.
The adoption of a number of job creation and training programs makes the study of long-term unemployment even more complex. In June 1993, the new government announced a number of emergency measures to encourage employment. Other legislation in 1989 obliged companies to prove the cause of dismissal. The plan also contains many beneficial training initiatives, notably the expansion of the apprenticeship programs.