An economist specializing in international trade issues, Vincent Vicard is deputy director of the French Center for Research and Expertise in International Economics, attached to Matignon’s services. He is the author of Should we reindustrialize France? (PUF, 176 pages, 12 euros).
Would reindustrialization solve a large part of France’s problems?
This is too much to lend to the industry, several characteristics of which are a little oversold, for example with regard to employment. The manufacturing industry currently represents 11% of employment in France. We must not dream: even with a very ambitious reindustrialization policy, we will not necessarily increase the employment rate in France – a few tens or hundreds of thousands of jobs can be created at best.
But a projection from the management of research, studies and statistics and France Stratégie shows that, by 2030, the employment rate will remain stable, because if we reindustrialize certain sectors, the Productivity gains will continue to reduce industrial employment in others. Industry will not be enough to provide good jobs for the middle class. However, it plays a major role in certain employment areas far from metropolitan areas.
Is France really reindustrializing?
The indicators are ambiguous. We experienced a period of very significant decline in industrial employment and the share of industry in GDP from the 1980s until the first decade of the 21st century.e century. For around ten years, we have experienced stabilization rather than reindustrialization, even if 130,000 jobs have been created in industry since 2017, particularly in the agri-food sector. But industrial production remains below its 2019 level, before the Covid-19 crisis, and productivity in French industry is decreasing, which can be explained by the type of jobs that have been created and which are not necessarily in high value-added industrial sectors. Before talking about reindustrialization, we should ask ourselves what industry we need in France, while global geopolitics and the climate crisis are changing all the reading grids.
Does reindustrialization follow a strategy?
The fight against deindustrialization began under the presidency of François Hollande with the pact for business competitiveness. Emmanuel Macron’s first five-year term continued this dynamic with the reduction in corporate tax and production taxes. Production costs have fallen, without making any difference between sectors and companies.
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