Why poverty rises while employment rises

In 2025, 10.88 million people in France live below the monetary poverty line, set at sixty per cent of median living standards, according to the European survey on income and living conditions (EU-SILC) published by Eurostat. That is 16.3% of the population, against 13.6% in 2019. Meanwhile, the number of unemployed in the sense of the International Labour Organization (ILO) went from 2.54 million to 2.45 million, and the employment rate from 66.2% to 69.3%.

More jobs, less unemployment, and yet more poor people: the contradiction is only apparent, and this page explains why — starting with what a relative threshold measures, and saying what recent series breaks do to the figure.

The poverty line is not a basket of goods: it is a fraction of median income. When incomes in the middle rise, the threshold rises with them, and a person whose income has not moved can fall below it. Poverty measured this way is a measure of inequality at the bottom of the distribution, not a measure of absolute deprivation.

The figures read with that key. Between 2004 and 2019, the count went from 7.89 million to 8.47 million (+7.4%) and the rate from 13.5% to 13.6%, with a low at 12.5% in 2008. Since 2019, the count has gained 2.41 million, or +28.4% — 1.19 million of it in 2022 alone, from 9.09 million to 10.28 million. Yet Eurostat flags a series break in 2020 and another in 2022: part of that step is a change of method, not impoverishment.

The Gini index, which measures inequality across the whole income distribution on a scale from zero to one hundred, went from 29.2 in 2019 to 30.4 in 2025 (1.2 more): a real but moderate rise. The population, for its part, grew by only +2.4%: demography explains only a small fraction of the rise in the count.

What has changed since 2019 comes down to three facts. Employment rose, but it rose in number of people more than in hours, and part of the jobs created — apprenticeships, part-time work, micro-businesses — are low-income jobs that lift people out of unemployment without lifting them out of poverty. Unemployment fell, but the number of unemployed in 2025 (2.45 million) remains close to that of 2003 (2.37 million): the fall from the 2015 peak (3.08 million) returns to square one, it does not go beyond.

The third fact is inflation. Between 2019 and 2025, prices rose by +15.5% for all households and by +15.5% for the poorest twenty per cent: a small gap over six years, but concentrated in 2022, when the index of the poorest rose by +5.6% against +5.3% for all. The lowest incomes, more exposed to energy and food, were hit first — before upratings caught up.

Unemployment and poverty do not overlap. Some poor people work; others are retired, students, or inactive without being unemployed. The link between the two runs through household income, not an individual's status: a part-time job in a single-parent household leaves it below the line, insured unemployment in a two-earner household leaves it above.

Social protection spending — 23.9% of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2019, 27.2% in 2020, 23.7% in 2024 — cushioned the 2020 shock then returned to its pre-crisis level. It limits poverty without making it disappear; the rise in the count since 2019 happened at a constant level of social protection as a share of GDP.

Two episodes bound the period. The 2008-2015 crisis, when unemployment rises to 3.08 million and the poverty rate climbs back from its 2008 low: the expected relationship between the two. And 2020-2023, when unemployment falls while poverty rises: the reverse, under the combined effect of the health shock on the most precarious incomes, the inflation of 2022 (5.2%) and 2023 (4.9%), and the series breaks that make the before and after levels hard to compare.

In 2025, 10.88 million people below the line, or 16.3% of the population, after 15.9% in 2024; 2.45 million unemployed; an employment rate of 69.3% on an annual average (69.0% in the second quarter of 2026); a Gini index at 30.4. The three inequality series — count, rate, Gini — rise together since 2019, at different paces.