Job Redistribution a la Francaise

Luther Carpenter in Dissent

Ten percent unemployment, plus or minus a point, maintained for twenty-five years, has had corrosive effects. Job redistribution has been the main line of defense against these corrosive effects. Mass unemployment lengthens the waiting line for jobs. Only the best-educated young graduates in areas such as the sciences get a real job before they are twenty-five. Until then, they stay in school, piling up credentials, and getting more tense because of the heightened competition in school and in the job market. They may take apprenticeships or temporary contracts. To the French, a real job means a full-time one, with the protections of labor law, not an assignment scheduled to vanish in six months. Small wonder in this climate that 77 percent of a sample of young people said they would like a civil service job.