slight cold spell for salaried employment in the 3rd quarter

2023-11-03 12:43:50

Baptiste Morin with AFP / Photo credit: PHILIPPE HUGUEN / AFP
1.43pm, 03 November 2023

A little early to speak of a reversal of the trend, but a slight chill for private salaried employment in France: the third quarter was marked by “quasi stability” with the destruction of 17,700 jobs (-0.1% ). After several quarters of clear increase in 2021 and 2022, “this is the second quarter of quasi-stability” (following +0.1% in the previous quarter), underlined INSEE in its provisional estimate published on Friday.

In the red for the first time since the health crisis

Since 2020, during the health crisis, private employment was no longer in the red. Excluding Covid, we have to go back to the third quarter of 2018 for a decline in private salaried employment. But “we will have to wait a few months before talking regarding a turnaround, we are looking at developments which remain quite measured over two quarters”, commented to AFP Yves Jauneau, head of the synthesis and economic situation of the labor market division at the ‘Insee. These results go hand in hand with modest growth in the third quarter (+0.1%), following +0.6% in the previous quarter. And they are consistent with the Institute’s forecasts, underlined Yves Jauneau.

In its last economic report, in mid-October, INSEE predicted that job creation would “mark time” in the second half of the year, given “moderate growth in expected activity”. “After slowing down in the second quarter, employment should be generally stable between the end of June and the end of December,” wrote the institute. According to the provisional results published on Friday, private salaried employment still exceeds its level of one year earlier by 0.7% (i.e. +138,800 jobs) and that before the health crisis – at the end of 2019 – by 6% ( i.e. +1.2 million jobs).

“Disparities”

In the third quarter, Yves Jauneau notes “relative disparities” between sectors, with “a further decline in temporary work and in construction” and a slowdown in the commercial tertiary sector, a sector where there has been a huge amount of job creation since following the health crisis. At the same time, industrial employment “continues to increase”. In detail, temporary employment, the compass of the job market, is falling for the third consecutive quarter. In the third quarter, this sector fell by 1.9% (-15,300 jobs) following -0.5% in the second quarter and -2.5% in the first. Temporary employment is slightly below its level before the health crisis (-0.5%).

Excluding temporary work, private salaried employment increases “moderately” in industry and decreases in construction and the non-market tertiary sector, notes INSEE. Private industrial salaried employment increased by 0.2% (i.e. +6,400 jobs, following +5,300 jobs in the previous quarter). After catching up with its pre-crisis level in the fourth quarter of 2021, it now exceeds it by 2.2% (i.e. 68,300 net jobs created since the end of 2019). In construction, private salaried employment decreases once more in the third quarter of 2023: -0.3% (or -4,800 jobs), following -0.5% in the second quarter. It remains well above its level at the end of 2019 (+7.1%, or +104,400 jobs).

In the commercial tertiary sector excluding temporary work, private salaried employment was stable in the third quarter, following +0.2% in the second quarter (i.e. +900 jobs following +21,600 jobs). It far exceeds the pre-crisis level (+7.7% or +898,300 jobs). Finally, in the non-market tertiary sector, private salaried employment decreased slightly in the third quarter of 2023: -0.2% (i.e. -4,200 jobs), following stability in the second quarter of 2023. It exceeds the level at the end of 2019 by 4. 3% (i.e. +111,700 jobs).

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