Projections to 2060: a larger, older labour force

The French labour force is still growing briskly. According to the baseline scenario of the latest projections, the labour force should continue to expand at a steep pace until 2025, then stabilize before returning to a mild uptrend in 2035 owing to the high fertility of recent years. In metropolitan France (mainland + Corsica), the number of economically active people is projected to reach 30.1 million in 2030 and 31.2 million in 2060, or 2.85 million more than in 2010. These figures factor in the new projections for the total population, the latest information on the labour market, and the impact of the 2010 pension reform. The new profile is largely explained by (1) an upturn in the senior participation rate due to the pension reform and (2) a slight acceleration in total population growth on the assumption that fertility will increase. Nevertheless, because of the rise in the senior population, the number of economically active persons per economically inactive person aged over 60 is projected to fall from 2.1 in 2010 to just 1.5 in 2060. A change in net migration would immediately impact the labour-force size, whereas a rise or fall in fertility would have no effect until after 2030. These variant scenarios, however, would have little impact on the ratio of the economically active to the inactive population over 60.