#EMPLOYMENT & SOCIETY
Among young people who entered the French labour market in 2017 and held a permanent contract in March 2020, 24% were no longer on one three years later, according to Céreq.
Published on August 26, 2026
Céreq, a French public research centre reporting to the labour and education ministries, tracks entire cohorts of school leavers through its Generation surveys. In Céreq Bref no. 482, published on 3 March 2026, Fanette Merlin shows that among young people who entered the labour market in 2017 and were employed in March 2020, 58% held a permanent contract at that point. Three years later, in 2023, 24% of them no longer held one and had not become civil servants. The same indicator stood at 17% for the 2010 cohort and 16% for the 2004 cohort. Most of these exits were voluntary: 67% were initiated by the employee, through resignation or a mutually agreed termination at their request. Sector matters a great deal: the risk of a lasting exit from permanent employment is four times higher in finance, insurance and real estate. Separately, France's Dares statistics office established on a different data source that 36.1% of permanent contracts signed in 2011 had been terminated before their first anniversary, 16.1% through resignation and 12.7% at the end of the probationary period.
Does a permanent contract still mean a stable job early in a career?
Among the 2017 cohort holding one in 2020, 24% had left stable salaried employment three years later, against 17% for the 2010 cohort.
In other words: the contract remains the legal norm; it is no longer the measure of stability.
Four caveats, because they matter
- Two thirds of these exits were initiated by the employee: leaving a permanent contract is not necessarily something suffered, it can be a step up.
- Céreq's indicator measures a lasting exit from stable salaried employment, not dismissal: moves into the civil service are excluded from the count.
- The 2020-2023 window covers the pandemic and the subsequent surge in job mobility: part of the rise reflects that context rather than an established trend.
- Céreq and Dares do not measure the same thing: one follows a cohort of young people over three years, the other all permanent contracts over twelve months. They agree on direction, not on a single figure.
Why it still matters: sorting jobs into permanent and non-permanent says increasingly little about where a young worker actually stands three years after being hired.
For you
- Is an open-ended contract still a good proxy for job security?
- Did you know 24% of young people on a permanent contract in 2020 were no longer on one in 2023?
Source: Céreq, Fanette Merlin, "Chosen and imposed exits: permanent contracts put to the test by sector in early careers", Céreq Bref no. 482, 3 March 2026; Dares, Xavier Paraire, "More than a third of permanent contracts end within a year", Dares Analyses no. 005, January 2015.
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