A dynamic that is maintained, not far from the pre-pandemic level, but which has weakened since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. The Association for Executive Employment (APEC) has taken stock of the start of the year, and is publishing its barometer for the second quarter, this Wednesday, April 27, as well as a revised version of its executive recruitment forecasts 2022.
In early April, the organization announced the recruitment of 269,100 executives on permanent or fixed-term contracts of one year and more in France in 2021, or 18% more than in 2020 (228,700). “2021 was the year of the rebound for executive employment, with strong momentum in many sectors, functions and territories”, recalls the President of APEC, Gilles Gateau. After surveying its “panel”, a representative sample made up of 8,000 companies, APEC forecast in January an accentuation of this dynamic, with 289,300 executive recruitments expected in 2022 (+ 8% compared to 2021).
However, “While 2022 seemed to be heading the same way, the impact of the war in Ukraine has slightly affected our executive recruitment forecasts”, adds Mr. Gateau. Indeed, after a sector analysis carried out in March 2022, taking into account the first impacts of the war in Ukraine and the formatting of the last wave of its quarterly survey (among 1,000 companies and 2,000 executives), the organization has slightly revised its figures downwards: 282,000 hires are expected (only 5% more than in 2021, and a level equal to 2019).
Business confidence affected
As in 2021, disparities are expected to persist depending on the sector: engineering-R&D, IT services and consulting, all up compared to 2019, should together represent 45% of executive recruitments in 2022, while hotel-catering-leisure sector (-25% compared to 2019), the automotive-aeronautics industry (-21%) or communication-media (-21%) would still struggle to raise their heads.
The actual analysis of executive job offers published on apec.fr in the first quarter of 2022, which were much more numerous than in 2021 (+16% compared to the fourth quarter) reveals the same trends: despite the Omicron variant and difficulties in production and recruitment – ever stronger, the latter concern 69% of companies, and 87% of them point to the lack of profiles available on the market –, the companies surveyed were more likely to recruit executives, and the barometer of the second quarter marks a decline, due to the war. Three-month executive recruitment intentions are down on the SME side (16%, -3 points) and on the large structures side (58%, -9 points), but they are still at high levels.
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