the number of business bankruptcies is at its highest since 2016

With 13,266 business failures between April 1 and June 30, France signs its heaviest balance sheet for the 2nd quarter since 2016, a period marked by the financial and European crises, reveals this Tuesday the private firm Altares. The number of bankruptcies has increased by 35% compared to the same period last year, and exceeds pre-Covid levels.

It is the smallest companies that are the most affected, since structures with less than 10 employees constitute 91% of failures. Some sectors are more affected than others: this is particularly the case with trade, in a context of inflation that remains high: the French being more careful with their spending, consumption is falling.

Social movements and strikes against the pension reform this spring have also caused losses in turnover. Road transport of goods and catering are also affected, with many take-out businesses, whose numbers had exploded during the pandemic, going out of business.

The construction sector resists

In the clothing sector, the rise in insolvencies reached 70%. The increase in bankruptcies also concerns construction, impacted by soaring interest rates, the rise in the price of materials and the drop in building permits. But “the construction still ‘resists'”reads the report.

Geographically, Île-de-France, New Aquitaine and Occitanie are locatedt “at the second quarter 2016 insolvency level”we learn in this study. “The number of backup procedures – 431 – is almost at its highest level in history, while “judicial liquidations also show a strong acceleration”. These bankruptcies are accompanied by the risk of job cuts: according to Altares’ calculations, 55,700 jobs are threatened, “a threshold not observed since 2014”.