Indicator history

On 15 December 2010, the Observatory for Inequalities (Observatoire des inégalités) proposed a data mining project using the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (INSEE) data collected in 2007 to produce a profile of socio-economic categories for foreigner workers. The Observatory for Inequalities found that 5.3 million jobs in France were closed to foreign workers. While most of these are jobs in the public sector, nearly 800,000 of them are in the private sector. Public sector jobs are closed to foreign nationals from outside the European Union, with the exception of certain university posts and hospital doctor posts. In the private sector, bodies governing the professions do not recognize, for the most part, foreign qualifications, reducing the opportunity for foreigners to exercise their profession in France. The Observatory for Inequalities considers that the partial closure of the labour market to foreigners is one of the explanations for high unemployment among foreign populations in France, including young immigrants, and recalls that the HALDE had issued a recommendation in 2009 judging these practices discriminatory.