
Tom McMinigal
Advisor
After years of steady reductions in joblessness, France’s progress on youth unemployment is threatened anew – this time by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whilst more young people are in work, education or training now than before the onset of the pandemic, policymakers will do well to remember that that youth unemployment following the 2007-2008 financial crisis did not peak until 7 years after the crisis.
The French government has put youth unemployment at the heart of its plan for economic recovery and allocated significant funding in particular to strengthening youth employment support programmes.
Although these programmes come in different forms, most link young people to an advisor, who helps them look for training and employment opportunities. Many also give young people access to workshops and courses to improve their professional skills.
In some cases, the results of these support structures are striking. A recent evaluation of the U.S.’s Year Up initiative, which gives twelve months’ full-time training to young people from underprivileged backgrounds, found that participants went on to earn 30-40% more than their counterparts five years after leaving the programme.
Meanwhile in France, the success of the Garantie Jeunes, an intensive, year-long programme of support, has led the Conseil d’orientation des politiques de jeunesse to call for it to be made universally available to all young people in financial difficulty.
But these results are the exception rather than the rule: meta-evaluations have shown that, on average, youth support programmes have a small impact on employment relative to their cost.
So what distinguishes an impactful programme from a limited one?
One answer is the way they are delivered on the ground. Research conducted by BIT has found that the quality of day-to-day interactions between jobseekers and employment services can have a significant impact on engagement in job search and the rate of return to employment.
Since January 2020, we have been working with the Direction Interministérielle de la Transformation Publique (DITP), the Mission Locale de Paris, the Mission Locale d’Ivry-Vitry, and the French Ministry of Labour, on a project looking at ways to improve young people’s engagement and experiences with the Mission Locale.
Every year, France’s network of 440 Mission Locales help 1.3 million young people look for training and employment. In spring 2021, we’ll be piloting a new digital tool with the Paris branch, which aims to help young people prioritise their activities, stay motivated in their search for employment and maintain a regular dialogue with their advisor.
Mon Parcours Pro is the result of eight months of research conducted with the DITP on why young people sometimes abandon youth unemployment support programmes (report here).
It is a web application that will accompany young people from the start of their journey with the Mission Locale to the moment they enter training or employment.
Whilst the tool has many functionalities, the app revolves around three key behavioural levers, which we believe could have wider implications for the design of youth unemployment programmes:
We will be piloting Mon Parcours Pro in the spring and will report back on our findings in autumn.
The diagnostic report for this project can be found on the DITP’s website, here. If you would like to discuss this work further, please contact [email protected] for more information.
Advisor
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