Hélène Baudchon, the analyst at BNP Paribas, notes that the French economy private payrolls gains have been on an upward trend (+31k in Q3 2018, +54k 2018 in Q4, +66k in Q1 2019), contrasting favourably with the stability of GDP growth over the same period.

• Nearly 900,000 private payrolls were created on a net basis since the 2013 trough.
• The prospects for 2019 are encouraging judging by the latest Pole emploi study on manpower requirements, which reports another sharp rise in staffing plans of 15% after an impressive gain of 19% in 2018. These plans represent 2.69 millions of potential hiring. Their number is up in every sector and in a particularly dynamic way in the construction, industry and business services sectors.
• The large increase in recruitment projects on open-ended contracts (+24%) is also noteworthy (+8% for fixed-term contracts). This bigger number of staffing plans goes hand in hand with bigger hiring difficulties: the percentage of projects expected to be difficult reaches 50.1%.