Aviation is gradually recovering from the health crisis. Airbus will recruit around 6,000 people in the first part of 2022 to support the ramp-up of its production, the European aircraft manufacturer announced on Wednesday. These recruitments, which will be made worldwide, concern all the activities of the group (commercial aircraft, defense and space, helicopters), affirms the group, without specifying the number of recruitments by country.
“After this first wave, (…) the number of external recruitments will be reassessed by the middle of 2022 and we will adjust our needs accordingly,” says the group’s human resources director, Thierry Baril.
“Strong signs of recovery”
The paralysis of air traffic at the start of the pandemic had plunged the aeronautics sector into a violent crisis, leading Airbus to reduce its production rates by 40% from April 2020 and to announce 15,000 job cuts. The figure had finally been revised downwards in favor of public aid such as the partial unemployment schemes set up in France or Germany, the main countries in which the aircraft manufacturer is established.
In the end, the number of group employees fell from 135,000 at the end of 2019 to 126,000 on September 30, 2021, the last figure available. The 6,000 planned hires are justified by the “strong signs of recovery in the aerospace industry” after the pandemic and the need to “prepare the future of aviation and put in place the roadmap for the decarbonization” of air, according to Thierry Baril.
A quarter of the planned recruitments will concern “new skills” related to decarbonization, digital transformation and cyber-technology. Airbus, whose production of A320 single-aisle family aircraft fell from 60 to 40 aircraft per month during the pandemic, has started to ramp up and currently produces 45 each month. It plans to go back up to 65 monthly devices in the summer of 2023.
It even plans to increase to 75 monthly aircraft in 2025, banking on the strong growth in global air traffic expected in the long term. And the need for airlines to renew their fleets with more modern aircraft that consume less fuel and therefore emit less CO2, the main greenhouse gas.