Young people from the French Riviera are increasingly struggling to find work. According to a survey by INSEE dating from May 2026, in France, the unemployment rate for 15-24 year-olds in the first quarter was 21.1%. By comparison, the overall national rate is 8.1%: young people are three times more affected than the rest of the working population.
We gathered several testimonies that confirm this situation. Students from the French Riviera encounter difficulties both during the academic year and during this summer period. Yet it’s not the job offers that are lacking; there are thousands to be found on job search websites or in the form of posters in front of shops, for example. So why are so many young people complaining?
Difficult conditions, nepotism or lack of consideration… what students are observing
Some young people receive rejections or get no response from the companies they contact. Others have managed to get hired but still face many complications.
A student in information and communication tells us she found most of her jobs through her network of connections: “It’s quite hard to find a student job in Nice generally. I often submitted CVs and even with experience, I was rarely called back. The jobs I had were very often found through connections. The same goes for newcomers once I was in position,” she explains. She also notes that she never landed a position directly: “I don’t think I got a single job by submitting my CV directly, even though I had to hold about six different positions.“
When talking about the difficulty of finding suitable work, she states that companies looking for labor often concentrate in the restaurant or sales sectors, with particularly high pace during summer. She adds that depending on the positions, working conditions are more or less difficult, but she faced the same situation with each experience: “boss abuse because we’re young.” The student elaborates by explaining that she was often asked to do more than what was mentioned in her contract, which requires great versatility. It’s also important to carefully check your pay stubs.
Jeremy (a student in LEA, Applied Foreign Languages) applied a few months ago to work as a usher at the Monaco Grand Prix and managed to get hired. Despite this, he admits that access to the application process lacked clarity. He found out when to register thanks to his father’s friend.
Regarding working conditions, the young man explained they were quite difficult because his colleagues and he had to stay in the sun all day. Daily expenses quickly accumulated, particularly for parking or food: “We were forced to bring our own food since it was impossible to leave the premises, and the snacks on site remained very expensive despite our 20% discount,” he laments, adding that mandatory parking, located at the other end of the principality, often cost more than the planned €10 flat fee because of their early morning shifts.
Finally, the end of work days proved equally complex when leaving: “Leaving was a nightmare and really poorly organized. Everyone left at the same time and the trains couldn’t keep up.“
For another 21-year-old student, finding a job for the academic year proves easier than landing a seasonal contract, where fierce competition requires applying months in advance. However, her conclusion is bitter: she never got a position directly. She often submitted CVs and, even with experience, was rarely called back. Her jobs were almost always found through her network of connections.
Beyond “nepotism” which has become necessary to work around lack of support, she points a finger at working conditions sometimes on the edge of reason. While some companies play along by adapting schedules to exams, others take advantage of the precariousness of youth. She denounces boss abuse where employers often ask for more than what is mentioned in the contract. For her, the student job is now an absolute necessity to finance daily life (housing, groceries, studies), and not just pocket money.
Yanis, 20, studying business and sales, shares this feeling of frustration. For him, the French Riviera is a saturated market where employers are increasingly demanding, requiring experience and language skills (such as bilingualism) even for entry-level positions.
Despite unwavering motivation to land a summer contract, he hit a wall of silence and rejections. Many companies keep CVs without ever providing feedback, which is particularly frustrating. This lack of consideration ends up discouraging young people and making them lose confidence in themselves. He calls on recruiters to give students more trust and to value their desire to learn rather than their work history alone.
A recruiter’s perspective
The recruitment paradox: the obstacle of age and geography
While summer is full of job offers, finding a seasonal job remains an uphill battle for students. From employers’ side, the desire to hire is real, but it encounters legal and geographical realities. Caroline Chehikian, HR manager at Club Med in Opio, notes a significant influx of applications from minors. The problem: the presence of bars in the vacation village makes their hiring legally impossible.
To this age barrier is added the challenge of attractiveness compared to the coastline. “We’re a bit inland, whereas the French Riviera [on the coast] is more attractive for young people,” the manager explains. To attract candidates to the hinterland facing the housing crisis, the argument of included meals and accommodation becomes an essential lever. For non-housed locals, the challenge is fitting these contracts into the school schedule, even though by mid-June, positions remained to be filled urgently, particularly in kitchen and dining areas.
“Soft skills” rather than CV: an opportunity to seize
Faced with shortages of qualified profiles, recruiters are shaking up their criteria, an opportunity for students without experience. At Club Med, the diploma often fades before personality. “We recruit more on mindset, soft skills, rather than technical know-how since we train in-house,” explains Caroline Chehikian. From age 18, positions as servers or receptionists are accessible without technical background.
The emphasis is on soft skills: interpersonal ease, adaptability to a multicultural team (25 nationalities) and service orientation. While this flexibility offers young people an ideal springboard to strengthen their CV, with the possibility of joining mobile teams to go to the Caribbean or mountains in winter, it also requires knowing how to “sell yourself.” An exercise in communication that can prove intimidating for less experienced profiles.
Ultimately, while job offers abound on the French Riviera, the real challenge for youth is not a lack of work, but the conditions of access and exercise of these positions. True, some recruiters are opening new doors by valuing “soft skills” over diplomas. But behind this apparent flexibility, the reality for students remains marked by precariousness: invisible barriers of nepotism, ancillary fees that eat into salaries, and exhausting pace under the summer sun. Finding suitable employment is no longer just about submitting a CV; it’s accepting a difficult compromise where youth must often give a lot to hope to start their working lives.
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