France and Europe lacking in productivity: how to revive it?

Compared to the United States and China, France and Europe in general suffer from productivity that is growing much more slowly.

This is undoubtedly the most worrying weakness of Europe in general, and of France in particular, compared to the United States and China: productivity gains.

If we simplify, productivity is efficiency. It is the ability to always better combine work, machines and financial means to produce more with less. When a factory produces twice as many cars thanks to new robots, that’s a productivity gain. When IT allows a banker to process twice as many credit files in a day, that’s productivity. If we are no longer cavemen, if we live better by working less, it is thanks to productivity.

However, it is almost no longer increasing: +0.7% last year, half as fast as before Covid, three times slower than in the 1990s, seven times slower than in the 1950s. main engine of progress is broken down in Europe.

Many proposals but a titanic project

If we cannot produce more efficiently, producing more necessarily requires working more… More and better, knowing that the data published this Thursday by Rexecode show that the French work three weeks less than the average European. So we have some margin.

This is exactly what Renault wants to do, which signed an agreement with two unions out of three providing for the elimination of three days of annual leave on average for executives and a restriction on the use of teleworking, considered harmful to productivity. In exchange, management will improve health coverage for employees and propose progressive retirement measures to improve the end of their careers.

Is it possible to boost productivity? There are many proposals in the battery of reports released to revive Europe (Draghi, Leta, Noyer): invest hundreds of billions of euros in new technologies, improve employee training, reduce red tape, put an end to to the fragmentation of all European markets, including financial markets. A titanic project.