2023-11-29 10:47:07
It’s currently Industry Week in France. A seductive operation to promote a sector in full renaissance, but also facing multiple challenges.
After a descent into hell spread over thirty years, French industry has once again become competitive and dynamic. For five years, the number of new factory creations has exceeded that of closures. This year, billions of euros have been injected into giant factory projects, in pharmaceuticals, electric batteries and semiconductors. This is the most publicized aspect of reindustrialization.
The movement is therefore well underway, but it remains fragile, because competition is intense to attract investors between European countries. And with the United States where subsidies and low energy prices attract capital. Also fragile due to the economic context. Rising interest rates could compromise the heaviest projects such as those of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
Decarbonize
The industry must also reinvent itself with new priorities: sovereignty and decarbonization. Thanks to Covid, the need to regain a certain autonomy in supply, and therefore in the production of goods, has become essential to everyone. Entrepreneurs have also integrated the need to decarbonize their activity.
But this double injunction comes up against constraints that are very difficult to overcome. Firstly, the maze of administrative regulations which considerably slows down projects. And then it is the hostility of the local population which often prevents the opening of new factories, because the industry still suffers from a very negative image.
Also read: “The French automotive industry benefits from unprecedented investments”
Recruitment
This disenchantment between the French and their industry also explains the difficulties in recruiting. A shame for a sector which has fueled mass unemployment by preferring to subcontract or outsource. Factory closures have destroyed 2.5 million jobs in France. In the process, skills disappeared, young people turned to other professions. This is why human resources are sorely lacking.
Even with unemployment now above 7%, factory owners are struggling to hire, even though their needs are enormous. Between retirements and job creations generated by reindustrialization, the industry will have to recruit 1.3 million people in the next ten years. The city of Dunkirk, which has seen 10,000 jobs disappear over the last ten years, will create twice as many in the next ten years with the electric battery valley.
How is the industry going about meeting this recruitment challenge? Failing to find qualified personnel, employers invest in training workers from services. They also seek to attract women, who until now have had very little presence in the factories. Foreign labor is also part of the solution. Two hundred thousand immigrants will undoubtedly be welcome in the next ten years, estimates the Minister of Industry, Roland Lescure.
Read alsoFrench manufacturers present their energy transition objectives
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