TOY robots line Jérôme Veneau’s barber shop in Paris, and a Superman symbol adorns one wall. The decor is appropriate: Mr Veneau’s efforts to earn a living are robotic and tireless. His first 200 haircuts each month, he says, pay for his social charges and taxes. Only then does he make his first cent of take-home pay.

His customers are so plentiful that he regularly turns people away. Yet after 29 years, he remains a solo practitioner. When he falls ill or takes lunch, the shop closes. Why not hire someone to help? “Never, the whole system is a mess,” he says. He once had an employee, but the man claimed to have been injured by repetitive scissor-snipping. A court ordered Mr Veneau to pay €17,000 ($20,000)—some to the worker, some to the state. His family stumped up the cash. “I’ll never hire again,” he says.

Mr Veneau voted for Emmanuel Macron, France’s reform-minded young president, who vows to unblock the country’s labour markets. In a television interview on October 15th, Mr Macron promised to improve apprenticeships, job training and the unemployment-benefit system. This is to be his “second act” of reforms; the first, signed into law in September, lets individual firms negotiate directly with unions (rather than having to accept national agreements). Unfair-dismissal processes are also supposed to be more predictable.

Mr Veneau remains unconvinced that enough is changing to risk hiring again. Even Mr Macron admitted this week that his labour reforms need a couple of years to have an impact in cutting unemployment from its current rate of 9.8%. Nonetheless, as the economy picks up jobs are starting to appear. Employers report 290,000 unfilled vacancies, 27.5% more than a year ago (see chart). That suggests a lack of skills among job-hunters. Last week Mr Macron met leaders of unions and employer federations to see how to improve supplies of trained workers. This week the prime minister, Edouard Philippe, began his own talks on the matter. Parliament is to pass a second law on labour provision by next summer. Details are sketchy, and some ideas sound dubious. Mr Macron talks of “protecting” the self-employed, and some who quit regular jobs, making them eligible for jobless benefits. That could be costly. One estimate found welfare spending would need to rise by €8bn-14bn in the first year. Costs could be lower if eligibility were restricted, or if there were fewer cases of rupture conventionnelle (when employer and employee agree the latter will step down) that already trigger welfare payments. On skills, some are enthusiastic. Andreas Schleicher, an expert on apprenticeships at the OECD, sees “a paradigm shift in intentions” under Mr Macron. France’s complicated existing schemes create only one-third as many apprenticeships as in Germany, often at higher cost and with poorer outcomes. Companies see apprentice levies as punitive. Mr Macron says apprenticeships are seen as a “taboo”.

To emulate Germany would require getting firms to help design and implement vocational-training schemes that produce skills they actually want. But such radical change would mean wresting power from the education ministry, teachers and institutions that value only academic instruction. It is unclear whether Mr Macron is ready for such a big upheaval.

Many are sceptical about the labour reforms. Pierre Cahuc, an economist at the École Polytechnique in Paris, says entrenched interests have quietly proved tougher than commentators recognise. He notes that unions have kept the right to negotiate 13 crucial issues at national level, limiting how much freedom individual firms will get. Jean Tirole, a Nobel laureate economist, welcomes efforts to loosen the labour code but sees limits. The state still makes a “hubristic assumption” that it knows best how private-sector companies should structure their workforces. As Mr Veneau says: “It is a mess.”