Shortage occupations, a constructed indicator

The Besoins en main-d'œuvre survey on labour needs, conducted every year by France Travail, the French public employment service, asks establishments about their recruitment plans and about those they consider difficult. The results are widely cited to identify the occupations where recruiting is said to be a problem.

The published difficulty rate relates the plans judged difficult to all plans. It therefore depends on employers' perceptions at the time of the survey, which may shift with the general climate of the labour market as much as with the situation specific to each occupation.

These are, however, declared intentions, not hires actually made or posts left vacant. An anticipated difficulty may not materialise, and a plan may be abandoned for reasons that have nothing to do with the candidates.

The measurement of job vacancies relies on other surveys of businesses, harmonised at European level by Eurostat. A post is vacant when it is free or about to become so and the employer is taking active steps to fill it.

A high job vacancy rate may reflect a lack of candidates, but also high turnover: a sector where departures are frequent mechanically has more posts to fill at any given moment, without recruitment necessarily being difficult.

Dares, the statistics department of the French labour ministry, publishes tightness indicators by occupation together with France Travail. Their core relates job offers to jobseekers registered for the same occupation, and it is supplemented by components on hiring intensity, working conditions or the durability of the jobs offered.

These additions make it possible to distinguish situations that the ratio alone would conflate. An occupation may be tight because candidates are lacking, or because employment conditions lead some of them not to apply.

Offers posted with the public service represent only part of the market, and that share varies by occupation. Registered jobseekers do not cover everyone who might fill a post either, notably those already in work.

The classification of occupations also weighs on the result. A fine breakdown reveals local tightness that a broader grouping would erase, and vice versa, so that the ranking of occupations depends partly on the grid chosen.

Economists often set the vacancy rate against the unemployment rate in what is known as the Beveridge curve. A shift in this curve signals a change in the matching between offers and candidates, which occupational indicators then help to locate.

Measured tightness describes an imbalance without giving its cause. The same value may result from a lack of training, a wage level, a location or working conditions, and each explanation calls for a distinct reading.