Temporary work companies are gradually climbing the slope. Over the whole of 2021, temporary employment reached 730,500 full-time equivalent positions, on average, according to figures published Thursday February 17 by Prism’emploi, the employers’ organization in the sector. This performance is 18% higher than that of 2020, but it remains below the level reached in 2019 (–4%).
Companies that provide this type of labor have benefited from the recovery in 2021, while suffering many bumps. Over the months, the volume of hires picked up, with some yoyo movements, before ending the year on a positive note: at the last “Four months” (September-December), the number of temporary work contracts exceeded by 0.6% that recorded during the same period of 2019.
Fall in construction and industry
The evolutions are very contrasted according to the sectors. It is in the world of logistics and transport that the use of temporary workers grew the most in 2021 (+ 11.6% on average compared to the whole of 2019). Such dynamism is linked to the transformation of consumer behavior to obtain “goods and services”, according to Isabelle Eynaud-Chevalier, general delegate of Prism’emploi. The growing success of e-commerce and home deliveries is generating major recruitment needs among companies that deliver products.
Conversely, temporary assignments have fallen sharply in two professional branches which have used them a lot up to now: construction (–11.8%) and industry (–7.5%), due to major turbulence that shakes car manufacturers and aeronautics. Almost a quarter of temporary jobs “have changed in sectoral nature” during the health crisis, between the last quarter of 2019 and the last three months of 2021. This is a phenomenon of “reallocation” labor “that we had not anticipated”explained, Thursday, Mme Eynaud Chevalier. According to Gilles Lafon, president of Prism’emploi, it is “still too soon” to say whether these transformations will be long-lasting.