Contenu du sommaire : Sociologie du travail, 32ᵉ année n°4, Octobre-décembre 1990. Sortir du chômage... ?

On the basis of (repeated) observations of a sample of persons at first enrolled on unemployment, the trajectories between various positions (a stable job, temporary work, coverage by the Unemployment Fund, joblessness with no coverage, and inactivity) in the labor market are classified, and the resulting categories, analyzed separately for men and women. Although some sociodem-ographic characteristics (such as the family situation or level of education) of persons following given trajectories can be clearly observed, they do not suffice for explaining differences in itineraries. One of the interesting results of this study has to do with the rigidification of positions after the first year of joblessness.

The passages between various possible positions in the labor market, as well as the length of time spent in each one, are analyzed for "cohorts of jobless persons". Econometric methods have been used to calculate results and draw up the models provided herein. Many results are new, for example, about the linkage between the length of unemployment compensation coverage (as well as the amount of benefits) and the length of unemployment before finding a job or being struck off the unemployment rolls. Some of them contradict intuitions and differ significantly from the results that could be drawn from existing, often sporadic, statistics.

In June 1984, Creusot-Loire, a big French heavy mechanics firm, declared bankruptcy and laid off nearly 1300 people even though job security had been the central tenet of its personnel policy till then. A survey by mail in 1987 and with interviews in 1988 let us know what became of these workers four years later. The type of occupational integration, or nonintegration, following dismissal depends very much on the individual's earlier career in the big company. Behaviors, the capacity for learning, promotions and internal mobility had, little by little, "constructed" the individual's "degree of employability" by the time of dismissal. Group memberships too shaped identities and attitudes that hindered or favored job reclassification. This occupational history affected the possibilities of taking a different job.

How to come off unemployment and find a job ? On the basis of two series of interviews, carried at a three-year interval, with a small sample of unemployed persons, the strategies of job search are analyzed and classified. They are obviously related to the actual finding of a job, and its quality, as well as the length of unemployment. The adoption of a specific strategy does not seem to depend much on the level of education or skills. The strategies adopted by persons who look for a job autonomously or who are highly motivated to find work mainly differ from other strategies with respect to the "social qualifications" demanded by employers.

The decisions women with children make about their careers and procreation have been studied from two opposite points of view : the one based on the socioeconomic heritage ; and the other, microeconomic, that describes women's behavior in terms of arbitration and satisfaction. After a rapid survey of existing literature about each of these, the possibility of a middle approach, using "conditioned strategies" and the "household structure", is explored. Support for this new approach is sought in time series that show and help explain the temporal succession of events such as childbirth as well as periods of employment, unemployment and inactivity.

To explain how the labor market works, classical economic theory supposes that actors are perfectly informed. In reality, this information is very limited, even distorted, as three examples show : the information that young people have about both job opportunities and the places where they can look for work ; the "signals" that their failure in training programs sends to employers ; and the lack of information both that young people have about the wages they can request and that employers have about job-applicants' expectations. With respect to the last point, implicit criticism is directed at the economic theory of how the economy adjusts to unemployment by lowering wages.

The results of Italian studies of the Cassa Integrazione Guadagni, a fund that provides benefits to workers in big firms who are laid off but not actually dismissed, are subjected to theories about labor market segmentation, the job-search, and the perfectly informed actor's logic. Since none of these theories accounts for observations, cultural and biographical variables are taken into consideration. They lead us to see work as something other than a mere merchandise.

Certain unexplained "oddities" of the macroeconomy are recognized : in some countries, unemployment rates have stayed high despite an upswing in the business cycle and a situation somewhat like full employment. International comparisons enable us to look beyond the logic of competition and take into account the logic of status or, particularly in societies like France's, the importance of not losing status. This status logic keeps the individual from accepting jobs, positions or wages that are not "legitimate", i. e., better or higher than what would be accepted in line with the logic of competition. It thus leads to a high unemployment rate. This approach is used to analyze constrasting trends of unemployment in various countries, particularly in France.

The concept of "employability", as well as its usages in France and the United States, is analyzed along with its evolution as a function of macro-economic variations. The conclusions, which partly come from the seminar Leaving off Unemployment... ?", shed light on the difficulty of using this concept so as to take into account both macroeconomic constraints (the supply of jobs) and individual abilities. For this reason, criticism is directed at training programs that, organized by the unemployment office, try to "remobilize" individuals without paying attention to actual job openings. variations. The conclusions, which partly come from the seminar Leaving off Unemployment... ?", shed light on the difficulty of using this concept so as to take into account both macroeconomic constraints (the supply of jobs) and individual abilities. For this reason, criticism is directed at training programs that, organized by the unemployment office, try to "remobilize" individuals without paying attention to actual job openings.