Insee Focus · September 2025 · n° 362

Job creation by enterprise size category between 2012 and 2022 Job creation mainly driven by micro‑enterprises and other small and medium enterprises

Between 2012 and 2022, in the non-agricultural market sector, the number of salaried jobs increased across all enterprise size categories. These changes can be broken down into two components: net job creation within each size category, and job transfers between categories resulting from changes in enterprise size or from mergers, acquisitions or business transfers.

Over the period, micro-enterprises, other small and medium-sized enterprises, and intermediate-sized enterprises created 1.9 million salaried jobs in France. Micro‑enterprises accounted for nearly half of these new jobs, but many of micro‑enterprises moved into another size category as a result of growth or acquisition by larger enterprises, so that the overall increase in employment in this category remained limited. At the same time, employment in large enterprises increased over the period, even though they cut 173,000 jobs in their own establishments: these job losses were more than offset by mergers or acquisitions of establishments previously belonging to smaller enterprises.

In four out of five local labour market areas, there has been net job creation. Net job losses have occurred mainly outside large urban areas.