It’s been a rough start to the new year for the French job market. On January 9, Groupe PSA, Europe’s second largest automaker, announced plans to cut 2,200 jobs across the country. Shortly thereafter, Carrefour announced it would be slashing 2,400 posts while clothing retailer Pimkie aims to eliminate 200. The announcements are a reminder that President Emmanuel Macron just completed the most sweeping labor law reforms in a generation.

After the union-backed protest movement fizzled out last fall, employers have begun to take advantage of the new rules: PSA secured more than half its job cuts through a measure that loosens legal restrictions on layoffs, and Pimkie aims to follow suit. On a smaller scale, newspaper Le Figaro aims to cut more than forty posts under the new buyout procedure. The cuts are especially striking at Paris-based Groupe PSA, which makes Peugeot and Citroën cars and just purchased Opel from General Motors last year for €2.2 billion. 2017 saw record sales for the company for the fourth straight year as well as historically high profit margins. As a disgruntled PSA metalworker in suburban Paris told Le Monde, “the better things are, the more they cut staff.”