2023-08-18 17:18:48
By Thomas Engrand
Published on 08/18/2023 at 15:27, Updated on 08/18/2023 at 17:18
The number of vacant jobs remains very high in France. New Africa / stock.adobe.com
A total of 355,600 jobs were vacant in the second quarter, which represents a drop of 4%.
After soaring, almost continuously for ten years and particularly after the Covid crisis, their number fell slightly in the first half of 2023. The Ministry of Labor lists 355,600 vacant jobs at the end of the second quarter, i.e. a down about 20,000 from the first (-4%). A second decline after the 5% observed during the first three months of the year. In all, the number of job vacancies is down nearly 40,000 since January. The job vacancy rate fell to 2.2% against 2.3% in the previous quarter. A historically high level: it was 0.6% ten years ago.
A vacant post is defined at European level as a post that is newly created, unoccupied, or still occupied and about to become vacant for which active steps are taken to find a candidate. According to the Dares (Ministry of Labour), the decline affects all major sectors: “-7% in the non-market tertiary sector, -5% in construction, -4% in industry and -3% in the market tertiary sector.»
Read alsoWhy jobs are holding up in a slowing economy
The surge in the number of vacant jobs observed in recent years is mainly due to the fall in the unemployment rate and the increase in job creations recorded in France. The scarcity of available labor results in difficulties in hiring. If this increase is never good news for companies, it remains natural when a country is in full employment. This is the situation in certain northern European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands. Issue, “France combines high levels of vacant jobs and recruitment difficulties with still high unemployment, which reflects an insufficiently efficient functioning of the labor market“, emphasizes Gilbert Cette, professor of economics at Neoma Business School and specialist in the labor market.
Behind this friction, there are actually two quite different cases. The majority of job vacancies concern low-skilled positions in the commercial tertiary sector, construction or hotels, cafes and restaurants. Deemed not attractive enough, ex-employees are turning away from it to go to other sectors with better salaries and working conditions. An old problem that has been further reinforced after the Covid crisis. “These trades are even less popular than in the past. Finding people who are interested and committed for the long term was not easy before, now it’s the cross and the banner», underlines Roland Gomez, president of the interim group Proman. Back to the wall, many bosses do not hesitate to make efforts to make jobs more attractive. Transition from two to one service, increase in wages… the gestures are numerous but not by all and not always perceived as sufficient.
The training site
For these profiles, business leaders can count on the support of the State, which has undertaken several reforms to make periods of unemployment shorter and less profitable. In particular through two reforms of 2021 and 2023 which reduce the duration of compensation when the unemployment rate drops below 9% and review the calculation of the amount of compensation.
At the same time, cutting-edge sectors are also faced with the impossibility of recruiting, this time due to a lack of skills in society. Only one solution: training. Here too, the project was initiated by the government through the development of apprenticeship or the reform of vocational training. but it will take time to appreciate its full effects. In the immediate future, France must face a series of bad news. After the – slight – increase in the unemployment rate in the second quarter and the drop in activity observed in the interim, the fall in job vacancies could well reflect a slowdown in the labor market, long announced and so far contradicted by the facts.
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