Insee Première · March 2022 · n° 1895

Over the past forty years, employment has been progressively more and more concentrated in the major employment zones outside Île-de-France

Between 1975 and 2018, employment evolved in very different ways depending on the territory. The size of the employment zones is a determining factor. Employment increased more in the large employment zones, where it has become increasingly concentrated. The geographical location is also decisive. The area from the Atlantic coast to the Mediterranean coast and from the Rhone valley to Alsace, named here the “U of growth”, is the most dynamic area of the country.

The changes in the nature of jobs since the beginning of the 1980s have influenced the territorial dynamics of employment development. The “diagonal of low densities”, from the Ardennes to the Massif Central, which is well supplied with production jobs, has suffered from the decline in this kind of jobs. Conversely, the “U of growth”, and more particularly its large employment zones, has benefited from the boom in metropolitan functions (design and research, culture and leisure, management, intellectual services and business-to-business trade) to gain ever more jobs. In Île-de-France, despite the high proportion of jobs in metropolitan functions, employment is not growing faster than in the rest of the country.