The worrying decline in French productivity

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An alarming note from the CAE shows that productivity has progressed less than in Germany and the United States. In question, the decline of the education system.

By Marc Vignaud

VS’is a very worrying observation made by the Economic Analysis Council (CAE), in a note* published on Thursday 29 September. Its four authors show that France has seen the increase in labor productivity, the engine of its long-term economic growth, decline faster than Germany or the United States for fifteen years, between 2004 and 2019. The high productivity of French workers is however regularly highlighted, and economists often believe that increasing the number of people at work, via an increase in the employment rate, is the royal way to support the prosperity of the country. country. “Our observation, they summarize, calls into question the traditional diagnosis of the French economic downgrading according to which productivity would remain…