Despite an unemployment rate at its highest, "44% of companies have recruitment difficulties", notes the director general of France Travail

The figures for the job market in France are alarming. However, while the unemployment rate reaches 8.3%, Thibaut Guilluy, the director general of France Travail notes that 200,000 to 300.

000 jobs remain unfilled. “Despite the current economic difficulties, 44% of companies nevertheless encounter significant recruitment difficulties,” he said in an interview with La Tribune Dimanche. In construction, this figure reaches 66%, continues the director.

“We fill 92% of the offers entrusted and the average time has been reduced from 35 to 22 days”, rejoices Thibaut Guilluy, before continuing: “FranceTravailPro carries out 6,000 recruitments per day”. To achieve these figures, France Travail increased contacts with companies from 100.

000 in 2023 to 400,000 in 2025. Artificial intelligence also makes it possible to find candidates suitable for available job offers more quickly.

For small businesses, France Travail has simplified the process by allowing the submission of job offers by voice command. Young people contribute half of the increase in the unemployment rate An analysis which contrasts with the recent study by the job aggregator Indeed. The latter noted a 16.6% drop in offers over one year, while the share of permanent offers has lost three points in two years.

The cause is artificial intelligence, with a 31.1% drop in offers in design and artistic creation. Industrial engineering is also suffering, with a meltdown of 7%. Some sectors nevertheless manage to resist, such as catering, cleaning and sanitation, as well as certain health professions.

For the boss of France Travail, if unemployment increased from 7.4% to 8.3% in one year, "the indicator to follow is the employment rate of 15-64 year olds: it rose from 65.5% in 2017 to almost 70% today, or 2 million more people in work in nine years". But the concern is more among those under 25, where the employment rate reaches 35%, compared to 43% in Europe. A finding also noted by INSEE, which notes that “RSA beneficiaries and young people aged 15 to 29 contribute almost half of the increase in the unemployment rate”.

The fault is too little student work and a lack of orientation with 50% failure in L1, notes Thibaut Guilluy. The Minister of Labor Jean-Pierre Farandou regularly congratulates himself when publishing unemployment figures that, although unemployment has increased recently, the employment rate in the country is close to its historic highs. Last spring, he presented a plan for youth employment, without new financial resources, whose stated objective is to increase the employment rate of 15-24 year olds to 40% by 2030.

Machine-translated from French