Undocumented workers: four figures to understand the list of occupations in demand

By Benjamin Moisset (with AFP)

Published on May 23, 2025 at 7:52 p.m.

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Data Agriculture, home care, hospitality, and catering: the updated list of occupations in short supply, allowing for the regularization of foreign workers, was published Thursday in the Official Journal, after several postponements. It covers a total of 84 professions.

Fishermen, butchers, roofers, nurses... By working in one of the 84 shortage occupations that were just listed this Thursday, May 22, foreign workers will be eligible for a residence permit. The list, now published in the Official Journal , is established by region of metropolitan France, from Normandy to Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur.

This provision, intended to embody the social component of the law introduced by former Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin , is applicable until the end of 2026. It should allow employers who are having difficulty recruiting to keep their employees and avoid the risk of conviction. "Le Nouvel Obs" has dug up four figures to better understand it.

• Only 7 professions in tension throughout France

Only seven occupations experiencing labor shortages are found in all regions of metropolitan France. These are salaried farmers, home helps and housekeepers, cooks, salaried livestock farmers, hotel employees, salaried market gardeners and horticulturists, and salaried winegrowers and arboriculturists.

On the contrary, some professions are sought after in few regions. 22 are even sought after in only one. This is the case for gardeners (Corsica), surveyors (Normandy), and interpreters (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur). It should also be noted that some professions are, by definition, reserved for certain regions, such as fishermen, who are only found in coastal regions.

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To go into a little more detail, we need to look at the top 10 most sought-after jobs , excluding seasonal workers, drawn up by France Travail. At the top of the ranking are building maintenance workers (66,920 recruitment projects), kitchen assistants (61,270), home helps (53,210) and personal care assistants or nursing assistants (50,380).

Including seasonal workers, it is of course cafe and restaurant servers who dominate the list with nearly 110,000 recruitment projects. Hence the reaction of Franck Trouet, general delegate of the Hotel and Restaurant Association (GHR): thanks to this list, "we recognize that the hotel and restaurant industry, France's leading recruiter, is a sector under pressure."

There are significant disparities in the list of occupations in need of workers. On one side, there is the Île-de-France region with its long list of 41 occupations in shortage, closely followed by the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region with 39 sectors. On the other side, we find mainly the North and East of France, with Brittany (23 occupations), Normandy (26) and Hauts-de-France (27).

If this famous list was so requested, it is because the needs are immense. The progressive think tank Terra Nova attempted to quantify France's needs on May 12. According to their note , between 250,000 and 310,000 immigrant workers per year must be welcomed in the coming decades to meet the demand of different sectors.

" Immigration will continue, at a significant pace. Because the demand among the French for immigrant labor is there," warns Terra Nova in its note . It concludes: " It is a new immigration policy that must be imagined. It is also a new political debate on the subject that must begin ."