Government authorities and the media regularly show great interest in offshoring due to its role in manufacturing employment’s decline, in particular. However, it remains difficult to quantify company offshoring given that it can be defined in multiple ways. This article updates the literature’s previous research while proposing a new and improved methodological framework for identifying offshoring, based on machine learning methods applied to INSEE’s Chaînes d’activité mondiales (CAM) survey. Our analysis, which covers 1995–2018, shows that the number of offshoring companies has decreased slightly following the global financial crisis of 2009. We show that offshoring is procyclical and describe the characteristics of the offshored jobs and offshoring companies. A causal econometric estimate of the annual average number of jobs offshored indicates offshoring’s continuing macroeconomic influence on the dynamics of French manufacturing employment.

Citation: Beaurepaire, C. & Lavialle, V. (2023). Does Offshoring Still Play a Role in the Decline in Manufacturing Employment? Economie et Statistique / Economics and Statistics, 540, 21–42. doi: 10.24187/ecostat.2023.540.2101