In 2012 in Metropolitan France, among the 32 million people who had at least one job during the year, 21 million were in the primary segment: they were in work (almost) continuously and were (almost) full-time. Of the 11 million outside the primary segment, 4 million were there because they had limited their offer of labour in some way: they were continuing their studies or receiving retirement pensions, or they had health problems, or lived in a household where the standard of living was sufficiently high for them not to work. The remaining 7 million form the secondary segment. Many of these are young people who are not students, and this reflects the difficulties they have in entering the job market. However, the secondary segment is not simply a question of integration, since half of those in this segment are aged between 30 and 59. Women are more likely to be in this category, also those with few qualifications and descendants of immigrants. 20% of people in the secondary segment belong to a poor household, against 4% of those in the primary segment. This gap would be much greater if it were not for unemployment benefits and especially if the income of other household members were not taken into account.

The same person may work under different statuses in the course of a year; some of these are standard (open-ended contract, self-employed excluding auto-entrepreneurs, etc.), others are non-standard (fixed-term contract, temporary employment, auto-entrepreneur, etc.). For a quarter of people, their main status for the year is non-standard. There is a strong link between segmentation and employment status: on the one hand, 81% of employees whose status is mainly standard belong to the primary segment, and on the other hand, fewer than one tenth of employees on very short-term contracts, of no more than one month, belong to the primary segment, despite the possibilities of rehiring. However, segmentation and employment status do not entirely overlap; in the secondary segment, a very significant proportion (35%) have a standard contract.