The French economy was greatly transformed in the post-war years, with both slow and ongoing changes as well as profound disruptions. Over this period of more than sixty years, the weight of agriculture, then that of industry, have gradually diminished to the benefit of the services industry. Foreign trade has developed considerably. The successive oil shocks of 1974 and 1979 marked a break and the end of the post-war economic boom. The growth rate of the French economy weakened markedly from the middle of the 1970s. The decline in growth had a lasting effect on household consumption and savings, but also on public deficits: revenues became less dynamic at the very time when expenditure was growing more rapidly, in particular in terms of healthcare and social welfare. Corporate margin rates together with the foreign trade balance underwent substantial fluctuations. The period that followed the recession of 2009, atypical in its intensity, was characterised by a very slow return to growth and by a deterioration in the foreign trade balance for manufactured goods.