Employment is Increasingly Concentrated on the National Territory and Home-to-Work Trips are Increasing

Between 2006 and 2016, at the level of intermunicipalities (EPCI), employment gradually became increasingly concentrated across the national territory, a trend favouring nine dynamic metropolitan areas in particular: Paris, Toulouse, Lyon, Nantes, Bordeaux, Montpellier, Marseille, Rennes and Lille. The concentration of employment in the major metropolitan areas is exclusively the result of the concentration of the productive sphere, with the distribution of the presential sphere creating resistance to this trend. In six of these metropolitan areas, employment growth is also spreading to the surrounding EPCI, mainly as a result of the dynamism of presential activities. One third of the working population (i.e. 9 millions people) works outside their intermunicipality of residence, with the proportion of commuters leaving their intermunicipality reaching or even exceeding 50% in half of all EPCI. Home-to-work travel is mainly between neighbouring EPCI. Between 2006 and 2016, the number of commuters increased, particularly between residential areas and economic centres. The metropolitan areas of Greater Paris and Greater Nancy stand out, with the number of residents in both areas travelling to work outside their area of residence having remained stable since 2006, while other metropolitan areas have seen an increase of at least 0.4% per year.