France has many assets. This is what the government and President Macron have endeavored to demonstrate at the Choose France summit. The skills of its graduates are thus regularly highlighted.
However, this strength can also be a weakness. Especially since these talents, especially in digital, are highly coveted. In a report, the Institut Montaigne, a think tank usually classified among the liberals, sounded the alarm.
A brake on the way to becoming a structural problem
France would thus suffer from a real shortage in this sector. It even appears “at the top of the brakes cited by business leaders.” Its consequences ? It “restricts our ability to remain competitive in a world that is becoming massively digital and to participate fully in the development of future technologies.”
Digital technology is increasingly a skill integrated into all professions. The Institute therefore specifies the perimeter of the shortage on which it warns. It concerns the professions of design, development and maintenance of digital products and services.
How widespread is this phenomenon today? “Of the 945,000 jobs available in digital professions in 2022, nearly 10% of them (around 85,000) were not filled”, figures the report.
The counting of unfilled jobs and their real impact are frequently debated. They are thus brandished to justify a tightening of unemployment rules. However, Pôle Emploi has already qualified the effect of these jobs, qualified as marginal.
845,000 people to be trained between 2023 and 2030
Hiring difficulties are no less real for employers. The Institut Montaigne reports in particular “unprecedented levels of tension” in certain professions. This is the case, for example, in cybersecurity with 25% of offers filled in 2021.
“What today is only a brake on the development of our companies and our public administrations will tomorrow be a structural problem”, warn the authors of the think tank. Digital professions could represent more than 1.6 million jobs by 2030, they estimate.
Consequently, it would be 845,000 new people that France should train between 2023 and 2030. “Compared to annual demand, this represents at least 130,000 additional new talents to be trained in 2030”, specifies the study.
Is such a pace sustainable? In 2022, 70,000 new people have joined digital professions (40,000 from initial training and 30,000 in professional retraining). “The training offer is therefore largely under-cut to the needs”, warns the Institute.
This offer “must thus double by 2030 to meet a training need estimated by the Institut Montaigne at 478,000 people over the entire five-year period.” Its response to this structural problem therefore takes the form of an “action note” organized around three levers: attractiveness, the training offer, management capacities.