IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cai/repdal/redp_265_0835.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

French Unemployment Dynamics: a “Three-State” Approach

Author

Listed:
  • Idriss Fontaine

Abstract

In this paper, I provide a new assessment of labor market flows in France over the period 2003-2012. By using the French Labor Force Survey and the ILO?s standards, I construct gross worker flows and transition rates between the three main labor market states: employment, unemployment and inactivity. The cyclical properties of the series suggest that flows jointly involving employment and unemployment are the most sensitive to economic conditions. Flows between participation and non-participation exhibit less cyclical patterns over the business cycle. I then decompose unemployment rate variations by applying a steady state and a non-steady state decomposition. With a three state view of the labor market, I find that the job finding rate is the first driver of unemployment fluctuations in France, while the job separation rate is the second. Furthermore, the role of inactivity in shaping unemployment is not negligible since it explains one quarter of its variations. This empirical finding justifies a complete analysis of the labor market with three labor market states. Finally, I propose an analysis based on three partitions of the French population: gender, age and education level. This indicates that the sources of unemployment are different among these sub-groups.

Suggested Citation

  • Idriss Fontaine, 2016. "French Unemployment Dynamics: a “Three-State” Approach," Revue d'économie politique, Dalloz, vol. 126(5), pages 835-869.
    • Handle: RePEc:cai:repdal:redp_265_0835
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/load_pdf.php?ID_ARTICLE=REDP_265_0835
    Download Restriction: free
    File URL: http://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-politique-2016-5-page-835.htm
    Download Restriction: free
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Fontaine, Idriss & Gálvez-Iniesta, Ismael & Gomes, Pedro & Vila-Martin, Diego, 2020. "Labour market flows: Accounting for the public sector," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    2. Normann Rion, 2019. "Waiting for the Prince Charming: Fixed-Term Contracts as Stopgaps," Working Papers halshs-02331887, HAL.
    3. Moreno Galbis, Eva & Wolff, Francois-Charles & Herault, Arnaud, 2020. "How helpful are social networks in finding a job along the economic cycle? Evidence from immigrants in France," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 12-32.
    4. Charlot, Olivier & Fontaine, Idriss & Sopraseuth, Thepthida, 2024. "Job polarization and non-standard work: Evidence from France," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(C).
    5. Normann Rion, 2020. "Fluctuations in a Dual Labor Market," Working Papers halshs-02570540, HAL.
    6. Arnaud Herault & Eva Moreno-Galbis & François-Charles Wolff, 2018. "Network Matching Efficiency along the Economic Cycle: Direct and Indirect Ties," Working Papers halshs-01935582, HAL.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cai:repdal:redp_265_0835. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jean-Baptiste de Vathaire (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cairn.info/revue-d-economie-politique.htm .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.