The report by the CAS (the Centre d’analyse stratégique, the French government’s strategic analysis unit), published at the end of last year, forecast massive job creation in France by 2015, prompting some ironic reactions from those who accused it of having “forgotten” the still-recent crisis and the extreme fragility of European economies.
Beyond this unit’s work, what seems worrying to us is the nature of the sectors identified as “growth sectors”: services above all, and in particular local services. The other sector promised significant job creation is construction…
While French public debt keeps growing and European economies remain on the edge of the cliff, these considerations seem disturbing to us. Because apart from tourism, services for the most part – and, in the case of personal services, exclusively – only redistribute domestic wealth, without attracting wealth from outside. As for construction, on markets outside France it employs only a few engineers, the bulk of the workforce being recruited locally.
Then, of course, there are the “high-tech” sectors – and the self-assurance, even arrogance, of some does not reassure us either. Because French and European engineers now face competition not only on international markets but now in Europe too: Chinese, Indian and South Korean engineers, among others, are present in many sectors that have traditionally driven European vitality (transport, energy…). “Grey matter” no longer seems to be the preserve of the 20th century’s “elites”.
What is more, the race towards dematerialisation and towards jobs perceived as “noble” (that is, in an unfortunately common sense, as little “physical” as possible) cannot escape the constraints of reality. However clever the creator of dematerialised services, those services will at some point have to find a place on a “physical” medium: smart batteries, touch screens…
And for that, no one can do without increasingly technological materials, made from scarce resources. A few months ago, we mentioned China’s acquisition of mines in northern Afghanistan producing materials indispensable to cutting-edge technologies. And at the end of the year the same country cut its exports of “rare earths”, which are essential for those same sensitive products.
Aggressiveness? We think it is rather a reasoned dynamic, to ensure lasting growth based on the production of exportable wealth.
So, financially stifled, facing competition for their “intellectual” output, threatened with shortages for the production of high-tech goods, are France and Europe doomed to a brutal recession?
We believe in the threat and the risks, but also in the capacity to innovate and bounce back. But for that, we must still accept the imperative need to question ourselves profoundly. And change, when it amounts to a rupture, is always painful.
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