La quantité contre la qualité ?. Des professionnels de l’emploi entre « esprit gestionnaire » et relation de service

This article explores the links and areas of tension between performance-measuring policies and the quality of employment support provided, as defined in the practices and discourse of those working for public employment services, in both France and French-speaking Belgium. The aim is to show that the management of the work of the employment intermediaries? work using measurement indicators gives rise to sometimes clandestine practices of compliance with the statistical performance of their work. But similarly, the excesses of quantification practices viewed as unreasonable or harmful to their professional ethos push some of them to act contrary to this management spirit, focusing instead on the interests of the job-seeker and taking into account the quality of the jobs available, trends that are detected in both countries studied.