Youth unemployment in France

Business Daily

BBC

News, Business

4.4 • 796 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2022

⏱️ 17 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The BBC’s International Business Correspondent Theo Leggett is in France ahead of the Presidential elections to explore an issue important to many voters – youth unemployment.

In the northeast of the country a quarter of young people aren’t in work, education, or training. We explore what the issues are, the problems with inequality and recruitment.

We hear from Sebastien Bento Soares, CEO of Darquer, a lace manufacturer based in Calais that is struggling to recruit younger workers, André Dupon, director of Vitamine T, a social enterprise that helps unemployed people reintegrate the world of work. Salomé and Soufiane, young people based in Boulogne-sur-Mer, tell Theo what’s going on in their lives and Florence Jany-Catrice, economist at the University of Lille talks about the political issues underpinning the youth unemployment problems. Presenter: Theo Leggett; Producer: Josh Thorpe (Photo: Lucas, a young unemployed person learning carpentry skills at Vitamine T, a social enterprise outside Lille; Credit: BBC)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Theo Leggett. Welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. In this programme, as France gets ready to elect a new president, we'll be looking at an issue that really matters to millions of voters.
0:14.7	Le Chomage de Jeanne, Youth Unemployment. We'll be travelling through the northeast of the country, where a quarter of young people
0:21.6	aren't working and aren't in education or employment either. So is the problem not just unemployment,
0:27.6	but inequality. There are so many people who are fully, fully marginalised. The inequalities
0:33.6	are so high in this region. And we'll be visiting a factory where the owner would very much like to take on a new
0:40.9	generation of young workers to look after his very old machines.
0:45.1	The problem is he can't find them.
0:47.1	To find the people who first wants to come, come and work in an industry,
0:53.1	who are ready to learn, to spend time with the sound, with the noise, with old machine.
1:01.0	It's difficult to attract young guys.
1:03.0	That's all coming up in Business Daily from the BBC.
1:17.0	We are looking at the workflow where we brought about like 27 machines in one row.
1:27.4	Levers lace machine which has been built around 1815, 1840, which has been running here for the last more than a hundred years.
1:29.4	It is not modern stuff at all.
1:32.6	It's 25 tons of iron cast.
1:38.5	In a rather dark and noisy workshop, a short distance from the centre of Calais, history is coming to life.
1:42.4	This region is famous for its lace, Dantelle de Calais.
1:46.5	It was first made here in 1816 by workers who smuggled the technology they needed from the English town of Nottingham. Director Sebastian Bonto-Sueres
1:52.2	has been showing me how his vintage machines can still produce the finest material.
1:56.7	This is a woven lace, which a finer yarn, much more delicate, and it looked like the same.
2:04.5	But Sebastian has a problem. The average age of his workforce is 54.
2:09.2	He badly needs new recruits, mechanics who can learn to understand and tend lovingly to the needs of these ancient machines.
	...

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