Growth is down, but there is no lack of work. The private sector recorded 102,500 net job creations between the end of March and the end of June 2022, according to the provisional INSEE estimate published Friday. This is better than the small increase in the first quarter of 2022, with 69,500 more jobs.
A figure that surprises and questions the experts, given a delicate economic context. “We were expecting a slight slowdown rather,” says Sylvain Larrieu, head of the Synthesis and conjunctures of the labor market division of INSEE. “How do you create so many jobs with so little growth? asks Mathieu Plane, economist at the French Observatory of Economic Conditions (OFCE). He sees a “disconnection between the macro-economic environment and the dynamism of the labor market”.
Job boom in the hotel and catering industry
Private employment exceeded its pre-crisis level at the end of 2019, with 754,200 more jobs (+3.8%). A factor explaining this despite soaring energy costs, rising borrowing rates and shortages of certain raw materials? Sylvain Larrieu cites the mass return of foreign tourists to France during school holidays. “Employment in the hotel and catering industry explains a good part of the increase”.
The commercial tertiary sector thus posted an increase of 0.8% in the number of additional jobs (+97,300 jobs), after an increase of 77,300 jobs in the first quarter (+0.6%). “This dynamism explains most of the total increase in private salaried employment,” notes INSEE.
Two possible scenarios
Another reason put forward by Mathieu Plane, “companies retain jobs thanks to hiring aids, and seek to recoup gains elsewhere”. Two options are emerging for the future: “strong growth, accompanied by a return to productivity gains, or growth that remains sluggish and will be accompanied by job destruction”, according to Mathieu Plane.
In detail, temporary work, the compass of employment, continues its decline that began in the first quarter of 2022. While it experienced a sharp increase at the end of the spring 2020 confinement, it fell by 2.1% in the second quarter of 2022. (-17.400). “Temporary workers were widely used at the end of 2021 to replace absent employees”, notes Sylvain Larrieu.
Excluding temporary work, all the other sectors stabilized. Industrial employment increased slightly with the creation of 3,100 jobs (+0.1%). The construction sector is stable, with an identical level of private salaried employment at the start of 2022. Finally, private salaried employment in the non-market tertiary sector increased more markedly, by 0.7% (+19,500 jobs).