Apprenticeship: hiring aid maintained in 2025 but revised downwards

The current system, which provides aid of 6.000 euros for all companies, expires at the end of 2024 and the government has taken this decision to avoid an automatic return to the situation before the health crisis.

"In the absence of a decision, the aid would only have concerned contracts preparing for baccalaureate and below baccalaureate level diplomas and only for companies with fewer than 250 employees, i.e. less than a third of contracts," the ministry explained in a press release.

Aid for companies with 250 or more employees will continue to be subject to additional conditions concerning the proportion of work-study students or professional integration contracts.

The government specifies that the choice was made "to preserve aid for each contract, whatever the level of diploma prepared".

In this way, "we also enable companies to benefit from the skills essential to their development", according to the Minister of Labour Astrid Panosyan-Bouvet, quoted in the press release.

Thanks in particular to this aid which reduces the cost of an apprentice for the employer, the number of apprenticeship contracts has increased significantly in France, reaching over one million by the end of 2023.

But their cost to public finances more than doubled between 2018 and 2021, exceeding 20 billion euros, according to France Compétences.

The 2025 budget project, now obsolete, also planned to make savings of 1,2 billion on this aid.

According to Catherine Vautrin, who heads a large ministry that also oversees Labor, maintaining aid "demonstrates our desire to maintain our ambition and our mobilization in favor of apprenticeships."

The government decision must still be the subject of a decree which will be published "during January after referral to the National Commission for Collective Negotiation, Employment and Vocational Training (CNNCEFP)", the press release also indicates.

U2P deplores hasty decision

The U2P, an employers' organization representing local businesses, asked the government on Tuesday to abandon its plan to reduce aid for hiring an apprentice in 2025, deploring a hasty measure.

In a press release, "the U2P is surprised that this measure was taken in haste, without waiting for the Prime Minister's general policy speech" on January 14, "and regrets that the social partners were not more involved."

The Ministry of Labor said Monday that aid for hiring an apprentice would be maintained for all companies in 2025, but that its amount would be reduced to 5.000 euros for SMEs and 2.000 euros for larger companies.

The government took this decision to avoid an automatic return to the situation before the health crisis.

The current system, which provides aid of 6.000 euros for all companies, expires at the end of 2024.

According to the Ministry of Labour, "in the absence of a decision, the aid would only have concerned contracts preparing for baccalaureate and below baccalaureate level diplomas and only for companies with fewer than 250 employees, i.e. less than a third of contracts".

"Before reducing spending on training young people, the new government must make a clear and lasting commitment to apprenticeships, which have proven their worth in recent years, particularly in terms of job creation," insisted the U2P.

This employers' organization also considered that "financial support for companies must go primarily to those who need it most (...) namely companies with fewer than 50 employees."

"While waiting for the right decisions to be made, the U2P calls on the government to abandon this draft decree." This organization represents small and medium-sized businesses in commerce, crafts and liberal professions.

Illustrative image of the article via Depositphotos.com.