Posted Apr 22, 2020, 10:46 a.m.Updated on Apr 22, 2020 at 6:44 p.m.
“The year will be difficult in terms of employment. “ Questioned this Wednesday morning on BFM Business, the Minister of Labor, Muriel Pénicaud, did not hide what everyone suspects: the coronavirus health crisis is causing damage, despite a massive use of short-time working. The bar of 10 million employees covered by this system has just been exceeded.
The declarations of hiring of CDI or CDD of more than one month saw a monthly decrease “Historic” 22.6% in March in the private or public for contracts under private law, said Wednesday the Central Agency of Social Security organizations (Acoss). They had increased by 4.7% in January and slightly decreased in February (-0.5%). Result, over the quarter, their number barely exceeds 2 million. This represents a decrease of 5.6% compared to the last quarter of 2019. And of 9.2% for fixed-term contracts of less than one month, which represent two thirds of the signatures of employment contracts.
Half a million fewer hires
Even if the trend was to slow down before the crisis, the still provisional figures from Acoss show the extent of the brake from three weeks of confinement: to 6.1 million, recruitments, all durations combined, fell more half a million – 531,685 exactly – between January and March compared to the previous quarter! In the private sector, this collapse, immediately perceived by all the major job offer aggregator sites, especially hit the tertiary sector with 500,000 fewer hires, ahead of the construction industry (-10,785) and industry (-8,924).
This reversal also affects executives. The Association for the employment of executives (Apec) noted a drop of 40% in job offers in a month which spares none of the three most recruiting sectors of this population: IT, R&D engineering and the board. We will therefore be far from the 297,000 recruitments of executives anticipated this year. “Some companies have chosen to stop their recruitments when others postpone them […] As soon as the confinement is probably very gradual, the level of job offers can be analyzed again and we can also refine our forecasts ”, underlines the general manager of the association, Bertrand Hébert.
All these figures obviously do not bode well for those of unemployment. At this stage, the weekly registrations at Pôle emploi remained contained, the public operator counting “only” 43,552 more during the first four weeks of confinement compared to the same weeks of last year. Registrations even fell slightly from April 5 to 11, still over a year.
This is of course the anti-layoff effect of partial unemployment. The problem is that the fall in hirings will de facto lead to the “outflow” of people registered with Pôle emploi. It is this double effect – more job losses on the one hand, fewer recoveries on the other – that risks worsening unemployment.
Small sign of hope, the number of job offers published on a panel of fifteen sites during the week of April 10 to 16 rose to 80% of the pre-containment level, while it had dropped to 60% in the past three weeks, according to the Ministry of Labor. This recovery, strongly driven by the medical field, benefits the other sectors to a lesser degree, and in particular IT executives.
—————
>>> France facing the coronavirus epidemic. What were the different stages of the alert? What is the day-to-day epidemiological situation? What measures have the government decided to limit the spread of the pandemic? To support the economy? Answers here in the special “Echoes” file.
>>> How to use deconfinement. What has the executive already announced as an exit plan? What are the many outstanding questions? What does the Scientific Council recommend? And the other experts? How are our European neighbors doing? Answers here in the special “Echoes” file.
–
