Macron’s Labor Market Reforms Aren’t Enough
The French president still hasn’t tackled the biggest cause of high unemployment.
Judged by one measure only.
Photographer: Michele Tantussi/Getty Images
Every French leader since the 1980s has been elected on a mandate to fight unemployment — and failed. Whatever else he accomplishes, getting people into work is the one thing French President Emmanuel Macron will be judged on at the end of his term.
The Macron plan is basically a wish-list of reforms that France's senior technocratic elite has urged on its politicians for decades. The agenda involves a little bit of labor market deregulation and slight cuts to France's extraordinarily high wage taxes, but its centerpiece is a 15 billion euro ($17.28 billion) plan to invest in training for workers and the unemployed.