Hiring difficulties in France

Even though the level of employment in France is still far lower than before the COVID crisis, in spring 2021 many occupations faced severe hiring difficulties , which may be linked either to a skills problem or to the strenuousness of the se occupations. What are the consequences of these hiring difficulties ? One might think the corresponding tasks could be automat ed (robotis ed ), but when we look at the list of occupations affected by hiring difficulties , we see that this is not realistic; The long-term solution is to train young people and retrain adults for these occupations, but this will take time. A normal approach would be to increase wages in the occupations concerned. Curiously, however, hiring difficulties have not been associated with an acceleration in wages in France in the past. Only three solutions remain: immigration, demand rationing, larger incentives to return to work in the unemployment benefit system.