The obvious purpose of job security laws is to reduce unemployment but that is very different from saying that this is their actual effect. Countries with such laws typically do not have lower unemployment rates, but instead have higher unemployment rates, than countries without widespread job protection laws. In France, which has some of Europe’s strongest job security.
The very thing that makes a modern industrial society so efficient and so effective in raising living standards— the constant quest for newer and better ways of getting work done and more goods produced— makes it impossible to keep on having the same workers doing the same jobs in the same way.
The connection between job security laws and unemployment has been understood by some officials but apparently not by much of the public, including the educated public. When France tried to deal with its high youth unemployment rate of 23 percent by easing its stringent job security laws for people on their first job, students at the Sorbonne and other French universities rioted in Paris and other cities across the country in 2006.