The fight against short-time work fraud during the Covid crisis in 2020-2021 has allowed the State to recover about 217 million euros, according to a statement on Tuesday from the Ministry of Labor. In addition, "the control actions implemented by the services of the State and the Agency for Services and Payments (ASP) have made it possible to block or reject more than 329 million euros," according to this report.

In March 2020, faced with the economic crisis triggered by Covid and to avoid bankruptcies, the government had relaxed the eligibility criteria for the partial activity scheme. It had thus reduced the validation time from 15 to 2 days of companies' requests, which no longer made it possible to carry out a priori checks.

Massive fraud attempts

In July 2021, the Court of Auditors pointed out that this had generated "on a large scale" massive attempts at fraud and fraud, such as the creation of companies for the sole purpose of benefiting from short-time work payments on the basis of a false declaration of schedules and staff.

From May 2020, the state launched control plans. During this period (2020-2021 mainly), "more than 89,000 a posteriori controls and one million a priori controls were carried out (...) These controls have led to the launch of numerous actions before the administrative and judicial courts, "says the Ministry of Labor.

Higher cost

However, the amount of proven fraud remains relatively low compared to the overall cost of the support mechanisms put in place by the State. In total, according to Dares, the statistical division of the Ministry of Labour, between March 2020 and June 2022, the cost for public administrations of short-time work expenditure is estimated at around 35 billion euros. Nearly 6.7 million employees in March 2020 and up to 8.4 million in April 2020, at the peak of the first lockdown, were able to benefit from the system.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, 98,000 employees still benefited on average each month from short-time work (compared to 43,000 employees on average in January 2020 before the crisis), according to the ministry.

  • Covid 19
  • Society
  • Economy
  • Work
  • Court of Auditors
  • state