> Permanently hiring someone (and emphasis on the permanent, firing someone on a CDI contract is extremely costly, far easier just to leave someone without work

> Permanently hiring someone (and emphasis on the permanent, firing someone on a CDI contract is extremely costly, far easier just to leave someone without work but still pay them until they quit) is so expensive that almost all new jobs (~85% actually) are for temporary contracts limited by law to 12 months. 65% are for <1 month contracts. Think about it: 2 in every 3 people who get a job offer in France this week will be unemployed in a month. You are twisting the statistics. Of course you don't sign permanent contracts as much as temporary contracts: you sign one and you keep it for 3, 5, 10, 20 years. The fact is that 80 to 90% of employees have a permanent contract. It is just that the small pool of employees with temporary contracts generate a huge number of contract because, well, they are temporary. And the very short temporary contracts will generate an even bigger number of contracts that longer temporary contracts. Also, the limit for a temporary contract is not 12 months. In the general case, it is 18 months (there are cases where it is 9 months, and others were it is 36 months). > An employee in France making the country's average wage costs the employer (in absolute terms) almost the same than an employee in Switzerland making that country's average income (which in PPP is higher than France's). No way. Average wage in France is 2300 € net / month, which is 3000 € gross, which costs the employer around 4000 €. Average income in Switzerland is over 5500 € gross / month. I won't even bother to calculate the employer's cost to give an employee such income, because the figure is already way higher than the French one.