France Work Tuesday communicates employment figures for the second quarter. If we believe the latest data communicated by state services, they are rather positive given the amount of contributions received.
Published
Reading time: 2min
/2025/07/29/maxstockworld351948-68885795ce121465847092.jpg)
The hires continue in France, a phenomenon, which may seem paradoxical given the economic context but noted by the services of the URSSAF, the organization responsible for collecting and redistributing social contributions. It is therefore an excellent observatory since the volume of contributions collected from companies and employees is a real thermometer: the more jobs, the more we contribute; The less jobs, the less we contribute. It’s logical.
What does URSSAF say? That the number of hiring declarations of more than a month (excluding interim) increased by almost 2% in the second quarter (between April and June) compared to the 1st quarter. Between April and June, this is concretely 2,350,000 hires of employees by French companies.
Is this a real change if you look at the data over a longer period? It is a resumption trend since the beginning of the year which has been succeeding in several consecutive months of decline since mid-2010. The progression is all the more remarkable since it is brought by the dynamism of hiring declarations in permanent contracts (indefinite contracts): +4% over three months. Conversely, tax declarations on fixed -term contracts (fixed duration) drop by almost 1%. The share of CDIs in recruitments is generally 52% and URSSAF ensures that it is an never reached level.
How to explain this dynamic in terms of hiring in an economic and political context full of uncertainty? When we look closely, the largest number of recruitments are made in companies with less than 20 employees, SMEs. It is much lower in large structures. We could therefore conclude that, despite the uncertainties on the evolution of the economic situation, small businesses have orders to honor, even if there are complicated sectors, including the building.
This is a sign that the French economy is rather resilient even in business creations since, and it is the other positive figure, in the first half, the INSEE has identified 575,000 new registrations of companies, including microentreprises, with the commercial register. Level close to that of last year.