Let it be said: less than a year from the deadline, while the countdown will pass below 300 days at the end of next week, the Paris 2024 Games are still recruiting. They are recruiting everywhere, in all directions. Massively, without holding back their gestures. And the trend is not about to reverse.
In 2019, five years before the Olympic and Paralympic event, a study by the Limoges Center for Sports Law and Economics (CDES) produced a first figure on the employment prospects generated by the Paris Games. 2024. It already looked good: 150.000 positions, a large majority of which were yet to be created.
Four years later, a new context and a rapidly evolving situation led the CDES to review its copy. The latest version of its mapping, unveiled by Christophe Lepetit, its director of studies, shows good progress: 181.000 jobs in the fields of construction, events and tourism. Proof that the COJO budget is not the only one to increase since the health crisis.
The first phase involved building and construction. In total, around 30.000 jobs, mainly shared between SOLIDEO – the public establishment in charge of the new permanent sites – and its service providers. “ This first phase is now behind us, explains Christophe Lepetit. We are now entering phase 2, with staffing needs ahead of us. Recruitment will ramp up in the coming weeks and months, with employers wanting to be ready for spring 2024.”
Two sectors dominate the market: the organization of the Games, with 89.300 jobs (OCOG, partners, service providers and suppliers), and tourism (61.800 jobs). In detail, catering is in the lead, with human needs exceeding 40.000 people, ahead of private security (26, including 000 for the OCOG alone), marketing (22.000), and logistics (13).
Massive, then. And not a foregone conclusion in a job market where certain key sectors, including hotels, restaurants and security, are already struggling to recruit. But the big maneuvers are being prepared. Tuesday September 26, Paris 2024 and around fifty companies are organizing a job forum at the Cité du cinéma, in Saint-Denis, in the heart of the future athletes' village. At stake, no less than 16.000 positions.
The OCOG leads by example. Since its creation in January 2018, the organizing committee has expanded its membership without ever really trying to push the pace. Today it has 1.700 employees. But the wave will grow. There will be 2.000 at the end of the year, then double that next June, heading into the final sprint.
The calculation is easy: the OCOG will have to hire in six months, during the first half of 2024, as many new employees as during its first five years of existence. Most sought-after skills: customer relations, analysis and reporting, technical coordination, service provider management, mastery of foreign languages. Tuesday, September 26, the COJO could recruit a solid contingent of new employees in a single day.
Unsurprisingly, the partners of the organizing committee feature prominently among the most aggressive on this job market. Examples: Sodexo Live! and the RATP.
The first of the two, in charge of catering in the village and on the competition sites, announces 6.000 offers, more than half of which (60%) do not require any technical qualification. Reception, cooking, management, logistics… The palette is wide. The vast majority of these jobs (85%) will be creations, the rest involving company employees seconded for the Games. Recruitment begins now. It will continue until spring 2024.
The RATP has pushed the slider a few more notches. It has 6.600 jobs to be filled for the year 2023, including 4.900 on permanent contracts (1.000 work-study contracts and 700 integration contracts). At the top of the sought-after professions: bus and metro driver, station and station agent, security, maintenance. Around two thirds of the recruitment plan has already been completed. For the year 2024, the trend promises to be the same.
