Press release: the job market in French start-ups deteriorates for the first time since the beginning of the year

As part of its monthly French Tech start-up employment barometer conducted with Motherbase, Numeum, the leading organization representing the digital ecosystem in France, unveils the trends for April 2023. The dynamism of the beginning of the year is running out of steam, giving way to a decline: French start-ups shed over 3,600 jobs in April 2023.

Numeum looks forward to seeing you at the beginning of June to observe the May trend.

A general inflection

Although the start-up ecosystem has proved resilient in a tense environment, particularly internationally, Numeum observed a loss of momentum in April: the number of start-ups creating jobs fell sharply (-69% compared to the previous month). At the same time, the number of start-ups making redundancies increased (+50%).

After three months of net job creation, French start-ups shed over 3,600 jobs in April, bringing the total to around 274,000.

In contrast to previous months, this trend extends across the whole of mainland France, and particularly in the Paris region, which accounts for over 60% of job losses.

This deterioration is also reflected in all sectors, including GreenTech, which has been a constant leader for almost 18 months. IT services, martech, fintech, healthtech and HRtech are the sectors seeing the biggest year-on-year decline.

On a national scale, the 2023 balance remains positive, with a net creation of almost 5,000 jobs since the start of the year.

Economic constraints weigh on start-ups

Against this backdrop, Numeum identifies the possible factors behind this deterioration. The three main ones are:

• The slowdown in start-up financing since the second half of 2022;
• Any instructions from investment funds, which now prioritize profitability over the growth of their holdings;
• Price pressure, which prevents start-ups from passing on rising salaries and operating costs (accommodation, electricity, etc.) to their customers.

At the same time, demand is holding up well, with GDP up by +0.2% in the first quarter of 2023, driven in particular by dynamic investment in information and communications (+1.5% after +1.1%) – IT, telecoms and audiovisual – and by exports (nearly 60% of software publishers’ sales, according to the Top 250 panorama produced by Numeum and EY). It should drive the sector’s momentum

With the outlook for the coming months unclear, caution is the order of the day.

Methodology

Sample of 10,796 French start-ups over the month of April 2023.

Motherbase’s monthly measure of the number of employees (employee declarations) in April 2023.

Cumulative results, by region, by department, by business sector.