FRANCE:ELISE IWASINTA doesn't have a job, but looking for one is full-time work. Each morning she scans about a dozen websites for the sort of entry-level publishing job she covets but rarely finds.
“I’ve replied to about 10 ads in the past two months,” she says. Afternoons are devoted to cold-calling. Working from a list of publishing houses and titles where she would like to work, she sends between five and 10 unsolicited applications a day, depending on how motivated she feels. “Unfortunately, I’ve landed only two interviews.”
Iwasinta (24), from Montbéliard in eastern France, has a sparkling CV that ticks all the boxes for her chosen field. After her baccalauréat (equivalent to the Leaving Cert), she spent two years in an intensive course that prepares students for the competitive entrance exams at grandes écoles – before winning a place at a prestigious business school in Dijon.
With three publishing internships under her belt, she graduated this year with a master’s in management of cultural organisations. Now realising that all this may not in itself guarantee her a foothold on the career ladder, Iwasinta is tussling with thoughts that are increasingly familiar to her generation in France.
“I’m not under any illusions,” says Joanne Profeta (25), who graduated with a journalism master’s this year. “We were constantly told in college what the situation was like and that we shouldn’t expect to find the ideal job straight away. You have to keep at it.”
Iwasinta and Profeta – both at an early stage in their jobs search – are confident. Most of their friends are in the same boat, which makes it weigh a little less on their minds. “Of course there are times when morale ebbs and you say to yourself, I’ll never find anything, but eventually you resume the search and you know it will come,” Profeta says.
France’s overall unemployment rate is 10 per cent, but among 16- to 24-year-olds it is 23 per cent – the highest in 13 years.
However, with both education levels and the birthrate rising, and given the tightening effects of the global downturn and France’s own sputtering economy, the problem has been rising to the top of the political agenda.
François Hollande’s successful campaign for the presidency was built on two priorities – youth and education – and some of his biggest policy initiatives are designed to tackle the endemic unemployment problem.
One of Hollande’s ideas is the €2.3 billion “jobs of the future” scheme, which will create 100,000 jobs for young people in the public sector and 50,000 in the private sector by 2014. The programme will initially be reserved for young people in the most difficult circumstances (in troubled suburbs, for example, the jobless rate among 16- to 24-year- olds is over 40 per cent).
Critics argue that the young people will be working in pointless jobs and contributing little to the economy, but the government says the scheme will give them dignity and a route into the workplace.
The second plank of Hollande’s jobs policy is the “generation contract”, under which the young would get an indefinite work contract and would be trained on the job by an older worker, who would him/herself be ensured a job until retirement.
Iwasinta and Profeta are conscious of the national gloom, but they speak purposefully about their hopes and prospects.
“I’m not really angry. It seems to me that all French people are in this situation,” Iwasinta says. Profeta says: “If you have a bit of luck and you’ve worked hard, you’ll find something eventually.”
