Thales to hire 8,000 new workers this year

(Sharecast News) - French aerospace and defence giant Thales is to add 8,000 people to its global workforce this year to support its plans for growth, increasing its worldwide headcount by around a tenth. The company said on Thursday that half of the new hires will be from France and the UK, comprising 3,000 and 1,000 recruits, respectively.

Meanwhile, Thales will also add positions in the Netherlands, German and Central Europe, along with new employees in the US, Australia, India, Africa and the Middle East.

Some 40% of the new recruits will be engineers, while 25% will be industrial-related roles.

The recruitment drive, which will add to its global workforce of 83,000, comes amid a big push from European governments to boost their defence spending on the back of heightened concerns of an escalation of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Thales shares were down 0.2% at €245.70 by 1219 in Paris, solidly outperforming the wider CAC 40 index (down 2.4%) as global financial markets reacted to the launch of trade tariffs on global exports to the US.