Employability and Industrial Mutations

1Employability and Public Policy: A Century-long Learning Process and Unfinished Process

Understood as the ability to obtain and keep a “normal” job, that is, one that is not protected, employability is a century-old term that is being used more and more widely. It finds a natural field of application in the context of job renewal: rather than protecting a worker in a job, it is advisable to develop his or her professional capacity to adapt to future jobs, his or her employability.

For a long time, it was a concept developed and used by social and health practitioners confronted with the differentiated care of the unemployed: social workers, placement office agents, administrative authorities, doctors, trainers and so on. Researchers or specialists in an academically recognized discipline such as economics, sociology, education sciences or human resources management, came to grips with it later, and extended it to all categories of active workers, whether in employment or not.

However, the term remains controversial. The public debate seems to oscillate between fuzzy acceptance and virulent rejection. In the field of public policy, the term employability is indeed fraught with concrete issues and also with collective potentially stigmatizing or reproachful, representations. Using it often means focusing attention on individual aptitudes and motivations, seeming to exonerate the other actors in the labor market, and in particular companies, from any responsibility for access ...