It is important to understand France’s structural problems

We seek to explain the nature of the structural problems that the French economy is faced with in an educational way. We believe that the basic reason for these problems is the low level of labour force skills. This has resulted in: A low employment rate, leading to major income inequality before redistribution, which has led to large-scale redistributive policies that require a high tax burden, which helps keep the employment rate low ; The decline in the weight of industry and the weak corporate modernisation, leading to losses of productive and high-income manufacturing jobs and therefore low productivity gains; this has resulted in a worsening of income inequality and weak purchasing power growth , despite a greater rise in real wages than in productivity , which worsens cost competitiveness. These mechanisms are worsened by the international environment of fierce cost competition (which hampers the rise in unit labour costs) and tax competition. A low level of skills is therefore the French economy’s key problem.