Source: French to English Tester Published on: 2026-04-07
Source: The Conversation – France in French (3)– By Jean-François Garcia, Associate Professor in Human Resource Management, EM Normandie
Generation Z, born between the late 1990s and the early 2010s, is not uniform. While the search for meaningful work is associated with highly qualified young people, salary remains an important factor for those with education levels less than or equivalent to a high school diploma. Because, beyond generalities, it is also a matter of privileged and disadvantaged backgrounds.
The issue of youth employment has returned to the news spotlight following the Medef’s shocking proposal to establish a“Youth permanent contract”which could be terminated without cause during the first years.
This proposal is set in a context where unemployment among those under 25 years old is sharply rising again – 21.5% in France in the 4theIn the third quarter of 2025according to Insee. A trend that contributes to making young people, especially the less qualified, even more vulnerable at the time of their professional integration.
In order to better understand the relationship to work of low-skilled young people, we conducted a study among these young people (2,421 respondents) who have the particularity of being supported by the local missions of Normandy.
Who are the low-skilled young people?
TheObservatory of Inequalities (2025)reminds that “professional integration remains very unequal, and [that] job contract stability as well as the level of qualification strongly influence the relationship to work.”
The difficulties related to professional integration are very real for the less educated. In 2023, “among young graduates with at most a high school diploma and who finished initial training one to four years ago, the unemployment rate reaches 22%, compared to 9% among higher education graduates.”according to Insee. These young people therefore constitute a particularly vulnerable population when entering the labor market.
In practice, this vulnerability is often correlated with the social environment of belonging. According to theSocial portrait 2025 of Insee,
“Among 25-34 year olds in 2024, 15% of workers’ children have no diploma or only the certificate, compared to 2% of children of executives or higher intellectual professions.”
The same study specifies that
“41% of workers’ children hold a secondary vocational diploma (professional baccalaureate or equivalent, CAP or BEP), compared to 9% of executives’ children.”
These social inequalities in educational paths continue into higher education: 83% of 25-34 year-olds, children of executives or higher intellectual professions, hold higher education degrees compared to 37% of children of workers. Young people from disadvantaged social backgrounds are therefore more likely to be part of the population of low-skilled youth.
Only 7.5% of low-skilled young people are sensitive to CSR commitments
AIpsos/BCG/CGE studyconducted in 2021 with 2,242 students and alumni of top schools shows that young people would be willing to take lower-paid positions, or even more precarious ones, but more meaningful. AnotherBVA study for the Jean-Jaurès Foundation and Macif(1,000 French people aged 18 to 24, December 2021) shows that the ideal company for these young people is one that is involved in societal issues such as the environment (29%).
Our survey concerning the specific population of young people with few qualifications invites a nuance to these results: less than 11% say they are attached to having a job that is meaningful, while 42% consider salary an important factor.
Barely 7.5% of them say they are sensitive to companies’ societal and environmental commitments (CSR), and barely 2% express the desire to have a job that would allow them to have an impact on society. These results highlight that low-skilled young people have specific values and issues that are very different from those of young graduates from higher education.
How to explain it? Given their difficulties in sustainably integrating into the labor market, the quest for meaning or societal and environmental issues are not short-term priorities for them. For them, pragmatism takes precedence.
Insufficient financial resources
The recruitment process must be an opportunity to establish a genuine relationship of trust with this group of low-skilled youth. This involves a human resources policy firmly oriented towards equal opportunities and inclusion. The challenge: to promote diversity of profiles without seeking to oppose young people to one another, whether they are highly qualified or not. Objectively, it should be noted that, among the low-skilled youth population, not continuing education is not always a deliberate choice, but rather the result of insufficient financial means.
Our study clearly shows that these young people can no longer tolerate the degraded image that can be held of them in relation to work. They often feel that there are negative prejudices against them, which can sometimes take the form of stereotypes, and in this regard, their position is unequivocal:
“Stop discrediting our generation regarding work efficiency; I hear almost every day that young people no longer know how to work, it’s very demotivating,” testifies a young person interviewed.
Hence the recurrence of feelings of demotivation, discouragement towards the world of work, or even exclusion.
Respect, kindness, and support
Trust must imperatively be renewed with employers, especially since 60% of low-skilled young people are fully aware of the need to prove themselves to succeed in professional life.
It is still necessary to show them acts of trust. To do this, our study shows that the triptych of respect (not judging them, listening to their aspirations), benevolence (acknowledging the right to make mistakes, giving constructive feedback), and support (committing to a skills development process) represents important values.
Also read:
“The school grip”: do diplomas have too much weight in our lives?
These relational skills appear as key determinants of organizational attractiveness for this specific population. Once internalized and put into practice by the members of the organization, starting with the managers, these behaviors will then be more likely to promote the development of the purely technical skills of these young people.
Beyond these questions of human resources management (HRM), one might wonder whether the issue of the employability of low-skilled young people would not, more broadly, constitute a societal challenge. In this sense, the company would also have a societal role. As theemphasizes sociologist François Dubet :
“It is not acceptable that, for the most part, future elites come from the elites and that young people destined for the most arduous and lowest-paid jobs are born into the least privileged classes.”
Jean-François Garcia obtained funding from the Local Missions of Normandy as part of his study on the relationship to work of low-skilled young people.
–ref. Gen Z: No, the quest for meaning is not the priority for low-skilled young people. Yes, money remains an important factor –https://theconversation.com/gen-z-no-the-search-for-meaning-is-not-a-priority-for-low-skilled-young-people-yes-money-remains-an-important-factor-275850