France may officially experience a drop in unemployment, but there are not so many massive job creation projects. However, Amazon, the American online sales giant, has announced that it wants to create 3,000 net jobs in France in 2022, and this after having already recruited 4,000 employees last year. The workforce would thus increase to 18,500 permanent jobs.
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“A creation of 3,000 CDIs by a single company is considerable and rare, point Gilbert Cette, labor specialist and professor of economics at the Neoma Business School. This represents, for example, 0.5% of the 600,000 net jobs recorded last year in France. » If some wonder about the number of jobs that the development of Amazon could destroy in traditional commerce, Frédéric Duval, the general manager of Amazon France quoted in a press release, recalls that the company has created no less than 10 000 permanent jobs in the country for five years.
Why this flow of hires? E-commerce experienced an increase in its turnover of more than 15% last year, which is greater than the pre-crisis years and, in this ecosystem, Amazon’s market share reached around 19%, placing the company far ahead of its competitors.
Offensive Strategy
“Amazon’s strategy is very offensive, explains Édouard Nattée, boss of Foxintelligence, a start-up specializing in e-commerce analysis. The company multiplies the openings of large distribution centers but also local logistics centers across France. These logistics jobs require a lot of manpower. This growth also leads to the need for support functions, whether for the relationship with consumers or with suppliers. » According to the latter, Amazon must ensure these recruitments to always be able to accommodate more goods and not risk failing in its promise of quality of service.
If Amazon specifies that the positions to be filled concern “all types of profiles and all levels of skills and experience”however, a majority concern logistics jobs.
Labor available
The company highlights its working conditions, its training opportunities or its promises in terms of remuneration. According to Philippe Moati, professor of economics at the University of Paris and co-founder of ObSoCo, this communication has become strategic in convincing elected officials when the company sometimes faces local opposition when it wants to establish itself. on a territory. “When we look at the map of the locations of Amazon centers, we can clearly see that, in addition to the choice of places in connection with road infrastructures, they are also major pools of available labor and this is not is probably no coincidence”he said.
→ MAINTENANCE. Philippe Moati: “Amazon, an admirable success but a worrying trajectory”
It should also be noted that, for logistics jobs, Amazon signed a national agreement with Pôle emploi in 2021. In a press release from the company, the general manager of Pôle emploi explains that the electronic merchant has notably “has had recourse to the job franc system to enable candidates furthest from the labor market to benefit from these employment opportunities. » In an interview with the regional daily The voice of the Northa manager of the Amazon center in Lauwin-Planque, near Douai (North), affirmed that, out of 750 people recruited on permanent contracts in 2021, more than half had been unemployed for more than a year…
1.6 million jobs
However, many testimonies denounced very harsh and degraded working conditions. “In the warehouses, these are labor jobs, physically demanding, moderate onecompany trade unionist. But these working conditions are undoubtedly better than in other logistics companies, even if social dialogue remains complicated. And in the end, most employees do not want to leave. »
France is not alone in experiencing this recruitment dynamic. In May 2021, Amazon announced the creation of 10,000 permanent jobs during the year in Great Britain, thanks in particular to salaries above the national minimum wage. Eventually, it hired… 25,000. The company reported that more than half of those hired “were unemployed or straight out of education” (school or university). In total, Amazon employs more than 1.6 million people worldwide.
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Profits doubled in 2021
Amazon has global revenue of over $137 billion (about 120 billion euros) in 2021 and doubled its net profit to 14.3 billion dollars (12.5 billion euros).
The group announced last November that it had paid more than 600 million euros of compulsory deductions in 2020 in France, and to have achieved a turnover of 7.3 billion euros there.
With 37 million daily visitors, the Amazon site is the most visited of all e-commerce sites in France in 2021, according to a Médiamétrie survey for Fevad.
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