Jobs and accommodation in France: Revenge of the middle-sized cities!

This ranking, published every two years, confirms the trend due to the health crisis. The two websites note that “over the last two years, the Covid-19 crisis deeply impacted many industries, including recruitment and real estate”. Such difficult times “deeply changed the habits of the French, with people leaving major cities because of the small size and expensive rent of accommodation, and the spread of remote working in many companies”.

Middle-sized cities, more favourable to employment and real estate

Big cities are not as attractive as they used to be! This is the first teaching of this study. In terms of real estate, the French seem to have changed over the previous lockdowns. As such, “inhabitants of major cities are looking accommodation and are now looking for bigger accommodation”, and that’s something that highly attractive middle-sized cities can offer. For those “in need of space”, such cities offer a comfy lifestyle, with “additional square meters, for a budget that may be divided by 5 for the same surface”. And such cities offer very high rates of permanent contracts!

Both employment and accommodation criteria were used to produce this study. In the Top 10 of cities that are appealing in terms of accessible real estate offer and open labour market are small and middle-sized cities such as Mulhouse, Orléans (the most attractive in France in terms of jobs), Dijon, Rouen, Saint-Etienne, Le Mans, Limoges, Tours, Metz, Besançon. To be noted that cities that qualify as middle-sized all have a significant university or university branch onsite and specialised schools (management, engineering, French as foreign language, arts, etc.).

The dusk of big cities

After listing cities were the labour and housing markets are attractive and follow each other, the study points out “cities where job opportunities are interesting, but property purchasing power is not so good”. This is the case for Bordeaux, Lyon, Aix-en-Provence, Lyon, Nantes, and obviously Paris. It’s no surprise that major cities such as Paris, Marseille and Lyon don’t show the best results, “when combining both data, i.e. a favourable field for employment and the conclusion of a permanent work contract with a decent accommodation in terms of price and surface”.

Another lack to be noted: the absence of cities located in the Mediterranean belt (except Perpignan, in 14th position). According to the study’s sponsors, this is no surprise, as figures don’t lie. Cities such as Marseille, Montpellier and Nice “are not necessarily interesting in terms of professional attractiveness or property purchasing power”. 

Crossed methodology

This study was designed using a series of data: job offers, type of contracts, offered salary, property price and interest rate. For each city, average salaries shown in offers were then put in relation with interest rates registered by MeilleurTaux and the local property price to calculate the “property purchasing power”. And as the website notes, “the permanent contract rate per 100 inhabitant was multiplied by the property purchasing power to provide the ranking of most attractive cities”.