Denain, in the North, has long been a stronghold of the steel industry: the first cast iron factory was opened there in 1839. In the mid-20th centurye century, the Usinor group produced around 15% of French steel there and employed up to a third of the city’s inhabitants. A sign of the times, the 100,000 square meter wasteland left by Usinor, closed in 1988, will now be occupied by logistics warehouses, under the emblem of the Danish company Maersk. The announcement, made in May, will result in the creation of several hundred jobs. Millions of packages will pass through there on behalf of e-commerce giants like Amazon, which already employs some 6,000 people in the region.
This shift is not specific to Denain: the Hauts-de-France region, particularly hit by deindustrialization, has become the leading French logistics region with more than 103,000 employees in 2020, or more than 8% of regional employment. , according to the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee).
“ Nationally, logistics workers are now as numerous as those in industry. And in some places, like urban areas, logistics has replaced industry”confirms Nicolas Raimbault, teacher-researcher in geography at the University of Nantes.
All the professions in the sector (which includes warehouses, but also the transport of goods and passengers) represent 1.8 million jobs in France, indicates France Logistique, compared to 3.3 million for the industrial sector. According to the Subwork employment database, employees working directly in a warehouse numbered 785,000 in 2018, the latest figure available. “It is likely that today part of the growth in industrial employment actually comes from logistics activity, which has penetrated all sectors”estimates Stéphane Colliac, France economist at BNP Paribas.
Growing robotization
For certain categories of the population, being a warehouse worker or order picker is almost a necessary step into the world of work. “In the working classes, those who are workers – women more overwhelmingly move towards employee positions – have a great chance of having a job in logistics, or of moving there one daynotes Mr. Raimbault. And, for people with an immigrant background, it is often a step, after a first stint in construction or building. »
Logistics, where atypical hours are the rule, is especially demanding of low- or unskilled jobs. One in four people occupying this type of job had no diploma, or a diploma at the college level, according to the “Statistical portrait of professions” data from the Directorate for the Animation of Research, Studies and statistics, published in September 2022. Salaries are also lower than those in the industry and the prospects for advancement are lower.
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