The job market has been faced with major issues for decades now. Hiring the right talent is vital to the companies functions and to ensure its development. Recruitment and unemployment are undeniably linked as talents are trying to find the right position to integrate and recruiters are trying to find the right talent for their position. Moreover, recruiters are on the front lines when it comes to reducing the unemployment rate. Apart from making sure that they are attracting the right talent for their companies, they should also seek to reduce the number of unemployed workers within the national workforce. In general, the lower the unemployment rate a country has, the higher their development. Nowadays, more and more entities are reporting difficulties to recruit. Yet, there isn't a shortage of labor, the unemployment rates are, to this day, relatively high.
Before we jump into the article, I'd like to define key notions that are included in this study.
Firslty, Recruitment refers to the action of finding new people to join an organization or support a cause. Most recruitments are undertaken by dedicated Talent Acquisition teams but they can also be undertaken by Managers or C Level executives.
Secondly, when I talk about unemployment I will be using the OECD definition: Unemployment refers to individuals above a specified age not being in paid employment or self-employment but currently available for work during the reference period. Unemployment is measured by the unemployment rate, which is the number of people who are unemployed as a percentage of the labour force.
Lastly, Sourcing is a talent acquisition discipline which is focused on the identification, assessment and engagement of skilled worker candidates through proactive recruiting techniques.
Now that these key notions have been defined, I'd like to turn your attention to a few statistics that, in my opinion, are very alarming.
In 2020, Global unemployment rate reached 5.42%. Meaning that 1 in 20 people you'll cross on the street will be unemployed!
Since 1980, The unemployment rate in France hasn't dropped under 8% for a significant period of time. Therefore, France has a significantly higher unemployment rate than the global average. This roughly translates to 1 unemployed person out of 12. This might not strike you as much as it should but out of the 67 million inhabitants it becomes a real issue to have that many unemployed individuals.
In 2014, the unemployment rate was at an all-time high of 10.5% (1 in 10 people!). The trend has slowly been decreasing and today we find ourselves at an 8.34% unemployment rate. Even though it has been lowering, we still have a long way to go.