executive hiring forecasts are down in France

The war in Ukraine will have repercussions on hiring in France. Apec, the association for executive employment, has revised its recruitment forecasts for this year. They are affected by the crisis. And the morale of the executives suffers.

2022 had everything to become a record year for executive employment. At the start of the year, Apec displayed unfailing optimism. But the war in Ukraine came to change everything. The association for executive employment, which scrutinizes a sample of 8,000 companies, has just revised its forecasts. Result: executive recruitment intentions in the next three months are down. They lose nine points in the largest companies, only three points in SMEs (small or medium-sized enterprises) while the smallest companies do not seem to be too affected in their recruitment forecasts. Before the crisis, Apec predicted that we would recruit nearly 290,000 executives in 2022. Finally, hiring should not exceed 282,000.

Consequently, both executives and companies are less serene. The share of companies confident in the development of their activity in the next three months has lost six points. On the executive side, nearly one in two think that the war in Ukraine will have a negative impact on their business. They are also more numerous than before to think that it will be difficult for them to find an equivalent job. Their desire to change jobs takes a hit: 47% of executives with three-month mobility plans believe that the war could have an impact on their plan.

Not all sectors are affected in the same way. Tkings of them continue to display good health. They account for 45% of the executive recruitments planned for 2022. These are first of all IT activities where recruitments have increased by more than 8% compared to last year, despite the Ukrainian crisis. More than 8% of recruitments are also recorded in engineering, research and development. And, finally, hiring for legal, accounting and consultancy activities increased by 10%.

Despite this impact of the war in Ukraine, companies continue to have difficulty in recruiting. The curve continues to trend upwards when looking quarter after quarter. Now 69% of companies say that their past recruitments have been difficult. And they are even more likely to fear having difficulty recruiting executives in the next three months.