France: Skills risk deteriorating further, and weak skills have a disastrous effect on the economy

France’s very high proportion of young people who are not very employable fuels concern that, in the future, the skills of the population as a whole will deteriorate further, despite efforts to improve education and vocational training systems. It is well known that low skills among the population are associated with: High structural unemployment; A low employment rate; Slow productivity growth; Deindustrialisation; Insufficient corporate modernisation. A continued deterioration in skills would make it hard to be optimistic about the outlook for the French economy.