Les besoins d'emploi : contenu et problèmes posés par leur satisfaction

Some problems about employment needs The article deals with the nature of employment needs and the demands arising from these as the necessity of creating employment. It relies upon a synthetîc description of the growth of unemployment during thé last fifteen years. Three important and interdependant causes are recalled : the insufficient number of jobs created, together with an inadequate division by sectors ; the increasing use of labour force reserves by the extension of the weight of the salaried workers ; the birth of a « perverse » relation between mobility and unemployment which has helped to loosen the link between the creating of employment and the reabsorbing of unemployment. Because of this, quantitative and qualitatitve aspects of the creation of jobs are closely related ; without a change in the nature of the jobs the reduction of unemployment will be difficult, however many jobs are created. It is therefore necessary, on the one hand, to clearly define the notion of « employment capable of reabsorbing structural unemployment and, on the other, to study the relation between investment and employment. An « employment capable of reabsorbing structural unemployment » would appear to be, from analysis, a stable employment, minimising the risks of involontary mobility. This results in certain conditions which policies of labour management by firms and policies of restructuring should fulfil ; the latter should relate in a different manner investment and internal reconversion, in such a way as to minimise the suppression of jobs. This kind of employment, moreover, must conserve and develop for the workers a technical skill transferable on the labour market. The investment-employment relation is studied in an attempt to bring out the sense of a job-creation strategy whose aim is to economise the means of production : a brake on the obsolescence of equipment, the recycling of available production capacities and investment effective in terms of the number of jobs created. In the short term, a revival of economie activity by way of consumption can be inscribed in such a strategy. But a revival in a period of crisis is an inadequate response. Its study reveals two structural factors on which a related action is necessary : shifis towards the importation of extra demartd. on the one hand, and the volume and translation of the investment into a new capacity by product, on the other. The basic problem posed by a lasting recovery of employment h that on an allocation, different from that of the past, of the means of investment as rnuch by branch as by kind of firm, based on other objectives, other criteria of choices and other tools of political economy. The criteria related to employment must in this allocation, given their recognised importance, and those, notably, related to the notion of « employment capable of reabsorbing structural unemployment .à l'emploi doivent, dans cette allocation, voir leur importance reconnue, et notamment ceux liés à la notion d'empioi « efficace » pour résorber le chômage structurel.Salais Robert. Les besoins d'emploi : contenu et problèmes posés par leur satisfaction. In: Revue économique, volume 29, n°1, 1978. pp. 49-79