«We are closing two factories, it is impossible to have a vision for 2025», replies Michelin. “You know, in the car, it's complicated», adds Forvia. “Our contracts are not all booked», confides a large consulting firm. Never before has L'Usine Nouvelle experienced so many refusals to participate in its annual survey on recruitment forecasts for industrial companies and industrial services. And those who accepted are almost all revising their figures downward compared to our 2024 survey which identified 182,500 vacancies.
The ten largest recruiters in our ranking total 88,000 hiring forecasts (104,000 in 2024). In the lead, SNCF announces 21,000 recruitments in 2025, a slight increase compared to the previous year (20,500 hires), just like LVMH, second, which will recruit 16,000 people (compared to 15,200). The Bouygues group completes the podium with 10,000 positions to fill. New for 2025: this list is evolving and several updates will be made as recruitment announcements are made during the year.
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Many industrial sectors still report high needs. According to the Directorate General of Armaments, the defense industry is hampered by 10,000 available positions which are not finding takers. As for the pharmaceutical industry, which created 2,200 jobs in 2024, its professional union forecasts 5,000 jobs to be filled by 2030 for the digitalization and ecological transition of the sector.
Difficulties remain
Recruitment difficulties are decreasing, but remain significant. “Mid-sized companies cannot miss the right person. The economic slowdown will perhaps prevent us from recruiting as much as planned, but not from hiring an interesting profile», Indicates Sylvie Grandjean, the general director of Redex, a company specializing in metallurgy, which is constantly recruiting around ten positions. Nearly a quarter of employers anticipate difficult recruitment for the majority of their recruitments planned for 2025.
Companies still have a lot of difficulty recruiting in digital professions, in data at LVMH, cybersecurity at Bouygues, IT at Paprec… But technicians are also becoming increasingly sought after: maintenance technicians at Bouygues, Lactalis or Framatome, operating technicians at Suez, trials and tests at MBDA, commissioning at Siemens… are among the most difficult positions to fill in each of these companies.
On the good news side, 21% of the panel will recruit more in 2025 than in 2024 and 71.5% of respondents expect an increase in their workforce this year. Proof that wait-and-see is not the rule everywhere.
Check out our full exclusive survey here
Survey carried out by Hella Saïdi from October 28 to November 22, 2024 via an editorial questionnaire.
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