Students fighting the free market

And employers respond by simply not hiring people. Lovely.

I was going to say the stock thing, "and that is why there are no new jobs in France", but instead of just being flip about it I decided to look a little and find out the real story on employment in France. There are net new jobs in France, a respectable number of them. Employment has grown from 21.7 million about 10 years ago to 24.3 million in the most recent year I found data for. The rate is a little over a quarter million net new jobs a year, roughly 1% employment growth.

In the US we've managed to average more like 1.5% annual employment growth. If the French could get to that figure and keep it up for 10 years, they'd halve their unemployment rate to around our own level. The government clearly sees the need to encourage that, though obviously the unions do not.

We work much harder than the French. Their jobs average 1650 hours worked per year, ours 2000, in addition to the larger portion of our population working. (And of course, a much bigger population - France is a fifth our size). And it is quite clear the employment aspirations of the typical Frenchmen are to get paid a moderate salary by an unsinkable institution for an easy job he can complete the work for by about 11 in the morning.

On a recent trip to France, it was clear to me how that happens, incidentally. The state runs merit examinations in a highly tracked educational system. The best products of that system are slotted to tenure in the civil service, with a modest stream also going to work as technocrats for the big banks and the like. When they land in the civil service positions, they find they are bureaucrats long on the bureau and short on the things to crat (rule). The bureaucracy is padded with sinecures. Jobs a smart person can do in hours are split among several smart people. Who want to knock off early or come in late, the better to read Foucault in the cafes and talk politics etc.

There is another class in France that actually works, the small business people. Shop owners, scads of them, tradesmen. They actually work, as do their families (often extended). These days quite a few of these are immigrants or 2nd generation, not the scruffy head-kickers of today's headlines.

Farmers are supported by German paid subsidies. The high bourgois live off rents (Paris real estate is astronomically expensive and deeded down through families generation after generation), incomes from the large banks and mercantile fortunes, many of them quite old. With plenty of glorified servants as employees.

So there are jobs for anybody polished enough to flatter the rich, and other jobs for anybody with the gumption to work for themselves and willing to put in the hours, and other jobs for anybody smart enough to ace exams. Unpolished, not smart, and not wanting to work one's tail off independently, however, means left to the unions - if not to crime. That's who you see on the streets.

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