Minimum working time, degressivity for executives, opening of rights for resigners ... The Official Journal has just published, this Sunday, the new rules of compensation for job seekers which will apply from November 1 (except the method of calculating the allowance, which will begin on April 1, 2020), according to the decree published this Sunday in the Official Journal.
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To open rights to compensation, it will be necessary to have worked six months ("130 days or 910 hours") over the last 24 months - "the reference period". Today, this condition is four months out of the last 28 (except for those over 53 where the reference period will remain 36 months).
Consequently, the minimum duration of compensation also increases from four to six months. The maximum duration remains two years for those under 53, two and a half years for those aged 53-55, three years for those over 55.
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The threshold allowing a reloading of the rights, when one works during his period of unemployment, will also be six months (910 hours) against one month (150 hours) today.
Currently, the duration of compensation is calculated on the number of days worked during the reference period (multiplied by 1.4 to obtain calendar days). On 1 November, this duration will be equal to the number of calendar days, worked or not, from the first day of employment during the reference period until the end of it.
As a result, people who have worked in a fractional manner during their membership period (alternating short fixed-term contracts and inactivity) will have potentially longer compensation but also a lower monthly amount.
Indeed, from 1 April 2020, the "reference daily wage", the basis for calculating unemployment benefit, will be obtained by dividing the wages for the reference period by all the days from the first day of employment, and no longer only the days worked.
For the same job, this daily wage will therefore now be identical between a person who has worked continuously and a person who has alternated between short contracts and inactivity, whereas until now it was more favorable to the second. "Equal work, equal allowance", according to the government.
According to the government, the unemployment benefit will always be between 65 and 96% of the average monthly net salary of the reference period.
Employees who had an employment income of more than 4,500 euros gross per month will see their compensation reduced by 30% at the start of the 7th month of compensation, with a floor of 2,261 euros net.
Employees aged 57 or over will not be affected by the measure. The maximum compensation ceiling will remain at 6615 euros net.
Candidate Macron's campaign promise, the compensation will be open to resigners who have worked in the same company for the past five years. It will be conditional on "a professional retraining project requiring follow-up training or a project to create or take over a business".
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This project will be evaluated by the "interprofessional joint committee" (which succeeds the Fongecif) of the employee's region, which will judge in particular the "coherence of the retraining project", the "availability and relevance of the training identified, the relevance of the methods funding envisaged". If accepted, the employee will have six months to file an application for unemployment benefit.
The self-employed will benefit from a lump sum allowance (800 euros per month for six months) in the event of judicial liquidation. The professional activity must have generated a minimum income of 10,000 euros per year over the last two years before liquidation.
