Posted Nov 8, 2022, 9:19 AMUpdated Nov 8, 2022, 3:34 PM
Stronger than the crisis and fears of a forced landing in the economy. Salaried employment in the private sector is once again showing its resilience in France excluding Mayotte, defying pre-Covid forecasts and economic models. It increased by 0.4% in the third quarter, or 89,400 additional jobs compared to the end of June to reach 20.8 million, according to a provisional estimate published by INSEE on Tuesday.
Not only is this increase at the same level as that – still very strong – observed in the previous quarter, but it is clearly better than what the national statistical institute anticipated just over a month ago. His note on the economic situation then expected a gain of 59,000 jobs (private and public combined) from July to September.
Merchant tertiary, industry…
Employment continues to increase “almost at the same pace as in the first two quarters after +0.5% in the second (+93,000 jobs) and +0.4% in the first (+88,200)”, underlines INSEE. Even temporary employment has rebounded.
As a result, the private sector employed 445,000 more people at the end of September than a year ago and nearly 857,000 more than at the end of 2019, before the health crisis. “Work-study contracts, and in particular apprenticeship contracts, continue to make a significant contribution to this dynamic,” adds INSEE, which estimates it at at least a third.
Excluding temporary work, employment increased further in industry with 12,500 additional jobs (+0.4%). It now exceeds its pre-crisis level by as much and is even at its highest since the beginning of 2015. It remained stable in construction but still much higher than it was at the end of 2019 (+6.4% ).
It was in the commercial tertiary sector that it experienced the strongest growth, ensuring most of the rise in the third quarter: +0.5% after +0.8% in the second quarter (i.e. +60,400 after +92,500 jobs ). Finally, the private non-market tertiary sector progressed moderately.
A retention effect
Head of the synthesis and economic situation of the labor market division of INSEE, Yves Jauneau admits to having been surprised by the figure of the day which once again thwarted the current forecast, always in the right direction in this case. “We had made the assumption of a stability or even a slight recovery in productivity, which was obviously not the case because the growth in employment exceeds that of activity”, he says. .
This slight decline in productivity, he continues, is still based on the same assumptions: working time effect with still a lot of employees arrested because of the Covid, dynamism of learning, young people spending part of their time in the center training, or retention of labor by employers who prefer to keep their troops given the tensions in the labor market.
This retention effect is perhaps reinforced by that of the work orders of 2017, which may have reduced the fear of hiring. Another track, the advent of partial activity may have pushed many companies to declare employees employed on the black market.
Economist at the OFCE, Eric Heyer, is not so surprised because the strong growth in employment in the third quarter is in line with what the business tendency surveys of business leaders suggested. Like Yves Jauneau, he deduces that it is the productivity of the economy that continues to pay the price. “These productivity losses will have to be found somewhere: either in real wages or in company margins,” he analyzes, convinced that the job market will turn around next year.
In the meantime, job creation will continue to support tax and social security receipts, and facilitate the closure of public accounts.