Work, record vacancies and resignations in Europe. It is the “big turnover”

In the Netherlands, there are currently 123 vacancies for every hundred unemployed, 15 times more than in France where, in July 2022, the proportion of industrial companies reporting recruitment difficulties had reached 67%, a level not seen since 1991 (the long-term average for this indicator is 31%, according to Insee). Finally, the same is true for Italian companies, which in January were looking for over half a million workers: 45.8% of employers at the beginning of the year reported difficulties in hiring, compared to 38.6% last January .

Parallel resignation

In parallel, almost like an internal paradox of the current labor market, voluntary resignations are also on the rise in several countries. France, for example, reached an all-time high in 2022, with more than 2.16 million employment contracts terminated at the worker’s request. As a proportion of the number of employees, the rate of resignations stood at 2.7% in the first quarter of 2022, not so far from that of the United States where the so-called “large resignations” peaked at 3% in December 2021.

In Italy in 2022 almost 2.2 million resignations were recorded, 13.8% more than in 2021 (all types of contracts are included). In Spain, where the only statistic on the phenomenon is that linked to social security numbers, in 2022 there are around 70,000 workers with permanent contracts who have given up their jobs, more than in any year since 2001, when it began this statistic.

It is difficult to know how widespread this phenomenon is throughout the continent: the survey conducted by Edjnet’s partners sought to fill the gap in statistics aggregated at a European level by collecting some information in individual member countries. According to the Dutch Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) in the first quarter of 2022, 1.9 million people in the Netherlands said they had started a new job that year, around 400,000 more than in the first quarter of 2021. Also in Germany, where, on the other hand, the phenomenon appears to be very small, Gallup’s annual workplace study nonetheless shows a record number of employees looking for a new job: 4 out of 10 say they would stop working altogether if they could afford it, 25% in more than in 2016.

“The resignation rate is a cyclical indicator,” reads a note from the French Ministry of Labor on the phenomenon. “It is low during crises and rises during recovery periods, as strong as the economic recovery is rapid.” In practice, during phases of economic expansion, new job opportunities appear, prompting people to quit more often. And the shortage of labor tends to accentuate the phenomenon, in particular by fueling the practices of “poaching” of labor between companies.