Paris 2024 likes figures. Especially the good ones. With less than three years to go before the event, the organising committee issued a whole bunch of them on Thursday, September 30th, during a “progress report” devoted to employment and economic opportunities linked to the next summer Olympic and Paralympic event.
Not surprisingly, they are good. We have known this for more than two years and the presentation of an initial estimate of the impact of the Paris 2024 Games on the labour market in April 2019. It had set the bar very high, at 150,000 jobs created directly or indirectly by the event, in the construction (11,000 jobs), tourism (60,000), and events and organisation (80,000) sectors.
But the sanitary crisis and its impact on the economy did not change the situation. The pre-COVID-19 figures remain valid. Marie Barsacq, the Impact and Legacy Director of the Paris 2024 OCOG, explained this to FrancsJeux: “The figures presented in 2019 have not changed. The mapping has been updated a little, but the sanitary crisis didn’t impact the job creation forecasts.”
The same is true for the recruitment schedule. At SOLIDEO, the public establishment in charge of delivering the Olympic facilities, the peak of recruitment will be reached in February 2022, with 8,000 jobs. At the OCOG, it will be necessary to be patient, with massive waves of recruitment in 2023 and 2024. This was planned.
The organising committee currently includes 500 full-time employees. Marie Barsacq explains: “The postponement of the Tokyo Games by one year has not changed our strategy in terms of recruitment.”
For the most part, the Paris 2024 team is still very much a French one, but it also has recruits from Canada, Britain, Greece, Australia and South America. “We are going to become more and more international, with an increase in power as we get closer to the deadline,” says Marie Barsacq.
Eager to offer a new deal, the OCOG has already decided to change the habits of the Olympic movement by entrusting the teams in place at the existing venues (Roland-Garros, Stade de France, Vélodrome de Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines, etc.) with the organisation of the events. By a purely mechanical effect, it will therefore recruit much less. But Marie Barsacq explains: “This policy will not change the employment prospects linked to the Games. It will only change the name of the employer.”
Despite the sanitary crisis, Paris 2024 has organised around 15 “job dating” events this year, in partnership with Pôle Emploi and the French Athletics Federation (FFA). The first results show that the formula – a morning of sports activities in the stadium, mixing recruiters and candidates, followed by an afternoon devoted to job interviews – is working. No less than 64% of the participants landed a permanent job within six months, compared to 50-60% in a traditional job dating.
The OCOG’s ambition is to organise 50 of these meetings by the end of the year, then a hundred or so by 2022. On Thursday, September 30th, the “progress report” on employment and economic spin-offs was accompanied by an athletics version of “job dating” in front of the headquarters building of the organising committee, in the commune of Saint-Denis. Six positions within the OCOG were at stake, plus a few others offered by two of the Games’ partners, EDF and Decathlon.
Another initiative, announced in December 2019 but delayed by the pandemic: the creation of a virtual Pôle emploi agency dedicated to Paris 2024. It was launched on Wednesday, September 29th,and aims to list all the offers available in connection with the Olympic and Paralympic Games. To date, it provides 12,000 job offers in companies working directly or indirectly for the Games.
