"The positive momentum that began to pick up in mid-2021 should lead us to a record year", "significantly above" the record of 280,000 recruitments in 2019, Apec director Gilles Gateau told a conference. Press.

In 2021, the level of job offers on Apec.fr, which broadcasts around 45% of all offers for executives, thus returned to its 2019 level, with "a catch-up effect" in the last quarter (+24 % compared to the fourth quarter of 2019).

However, the differences remained marked between sectors, with offers up sharply in the health/social work sector (+46% in 2021 compared to 2019) or the pharmaceutical industry (+21%) but down sharply in the automotive/aeronautics (-24%), business consulting (-22%) and communication/media (-18%).

According to a telephone survey conducted with a representative sample of 1,000 companies in December, 67% of companies with more than 250 employees plan to recruit at least one manager in the first quarter of 2022, 12 points more than a year earlier.

This is also the case for 19% (against 17%) of SMEs (10 to 249 employees) and 7% (against 6%) of VSEs (1 to 9 employees).

But for Gilles Gateau, "this employment dynamic is threatened by recruitment tensions, which are now real difficulties".

A quarter of companies that planned to recruit executives in 2021 have given up doing so for at least one position.

And 78% of those who intend to recruit in the first quarter expect it to be difficult, mainly due to a lack of available profiles (for 87% of them), but also the gap between application and profile sought (51%), competition from other employers (44%) or salary expectations (32%).

© 2022 AFP