Although France is officially in an economic recession, retailers and travel companies are continuing to hire e-commerce personnel, and in some cases having a tough time filling vacancies, according to Fevad, the French trade group of direct-to-consumer merchants.

Salaried e-commerce employees in France increased 13% to 75,000 in 2012, as web teams added about 9,000 staffers, Fevad says. The report projects 10% growth in e-commerce staffs in 2013. 44% of companies surveyed say they expect to increase their e-commerce team a little, 29% a lot, and 27% expect their web team will remain at its current size. None of the 50 online retailers surveyed projected a decrease in staffing, Fevad says.

Web developers are the most sought-after, cited by 54% of those surveyed, followed by analytics personnel and customer relationship staffers, at 46% each. 40% of respondents say they are having trouble recruiting personnel, with those based outside of major cities having the most difficulty, Fevad says.

The survey was conducted for Fevad by the CCM Benchmark Institute, part of online publisher CCM Benchmark Group. Among the retailers surveyed were Vente-privee.com, No. 11 in the recently published Internet Retailer Europe 500, the PriceMinister unit of Rakuten Inc. (No. 31), Rue du Commerce (No. 56), and BazarChic (No. 144.

E-commerce sales in France totaled $32 billion in 2012, says research firm eMarketer. That represented 6% of the country’s total retail sales, according to Euromonitor data.