France must switch from protecting jobs to protecting people

At the beginning of the COVID crisis, economic policy in France, like in other European countries, focused on protecting jobs: support for companies to avoid bankruptcies (government loan guarantees, tax deferrals, aid for struggling sectors); massive short-time working schemes to keep employees in their jobs. But this policy is not sustainable, because of its cost, because it gives rise to zombie firms and because the crisis has led to a major shift in the sectoral structure of demand: some economic sectors will be in permanent difficulty ; others will grow. It will therefore be necessary to move from the relatively straightforward policy of protecting job s to a more complex policy of protecting people: maintaining workers’ income while they train to change company or sector. This policy is more complex , in particular because it requires an effective and large-scale training and retraining system.