the 2026 draft budget risks further complicating the search for a work-study contract

In the Social Security financing bill for 2026, the government plans to reinstate salary contributions for apprentices and is considering new cuts in hiring aid.

Is this the end of the apprenticeship boom? Since 2017, work-study contracts have exploded, going from 290,000 to 879,000 in 2024. A figure which risks decreasing, because as part of the social security financing bill for 2026, the government is proposing to restore employee contributions from which apprentices were until now partially exempt.

He is also considering new cuts in hiring aid paid to employers, cut several times at the start of the year. However, the effects of these first declines are already visible, with 65,000 jobs destroyed by the end of 2025, according to alarmist forecasts from INSEE. As a result, the search for a work-study contract becomes a real obstacle course, like in Marseille.

Since April, Camélia, 18, has been looking for a work-study contract to be a beautician in Marseille. “I still haven’t found it”, she laments, yet she devotes two days a week to her research. “I go to beauty salons, I do my little research on Facebook, Le Bon Coin, on the advertisements”, continues the young woman. She begins to stress because this contract is obligatory as part of her first year of CAP: “I have until December to find the contract, otherwise it’s out the door. They can’t keep us anymore if we don’t have a contract in our hands, so yes, it’s hot.”

She is not the only one to despair. In one year, her trainer Océane sees her students’ research deadlines lengthen. “It could take a month, two months, it depends if they were really active in their research. Now, it’s more around six months sometimes, for some“, explains Océane, trainer.

And this is directly due, according to her, to the drop in hiring aid for apprentices paid to employers. At the start of the year, they went from 6,000 to 5,000 euros for companies with fewer than 250 employees. “Often, they are small businesses or self-employedcontinues Océane, They don’t have a huge budget and yet they need this help. So, they are a little cautious.”

In the draft Social Security budget, learning aid risks being cut again. In any case, this is what Yves Hinnekint, president of the Walt association, specializing in apprenticeship, fears. “The little music is still to say ‘it is not improbable that we will affect the taxation on apprenticeship contracts, therefore a potential drop in the purchasing power of young people, it is not improbable that we will also affect the level of support for the apprenticeship bonus’.”

Behind, according to him, a massive elimination of work-study contracts. This year alone, INSEE anticipates 65,000 fewer positions. “The question I ask is what will become of these young people? Are we going to find them on the benches of ‘neither in employment nor in training’, the famous ‘Neet’?” worries Yves Hinnekint. Especially since apprenticeship is seen as a real tool for entering the job market, particularly in sectors that struggle to recruit.