Employment: According to Dares, companies now have fewer problems with recruitment

A small improvement, but this is not the end of the difficulties for employers. Recruitment difficulties have “decreased significantly” in recent months, said Dares, who sees “the start of a chill in the job market.”

“Difficulties with recruitment are receding after the peak reached in mid-2022, with the exception of the construction sector,” the statistics department of the Ministry of Labor emphasizes in a summary of the situation on the labor market in the second quarter. 2023 posted this. Monday.

“In industrial sectors, the decline in the share of companies that say they are suffering from recruitment difficulties is especially noticeable in the production of transport equipment (-11 points in the second quarter) and capital goods (-7 points). In the service industries, the strongest drawdown was observed in the area of ​​accommodation and food (-15 points),” she notes.

The job vacancy rate (the ratio of job vacancies to all jobs) also fell (-0.1 points to 2.2%) to levels, however, “still significantly higher than before the health crisis”.

To the cooling of the labor market?

The statistic could be seen as “the start of a cooling job market, even as companies continue to cite skills shortages as a major hurdle,” Derse analyzes.

He recalls that in the second quarter, employment continued to grow, but only by 0.1% after +0.4% in the first quarter. “For the first time since the health crisis, employment is less dynamic than activity, which jumped to +0.5%,” she stresses.

However, hiring on contracts longer than one month continues to rise and appears to be “reflecting an accelerating workforce turnover”.

More resignations

Compared to the end of 2019, the number of contract terminations is increasing every quarter, with the increase driven by an increase in layoffs. “Given the 550,000 resignations recorded in the first quarter of 2023, this is 24% higher than the pre-crisis level,” says Dares.

This overall increase in layoffs is “primarily driven by the commercial tertiary sector, especially in the trade, business services and accommodation and catering sectors, which alone account for 56% of the increase in layoffs between late 2019 and early 2023.” Darce concludes.