The building anticipates the elimination of 150,000 jobs by 2025 in France

Europe 1 with AFP // Photo credits: Annette Riedl / DPA / dpa Picture-Alliance via AFP 13:08 p.m., September 13, 2023

The construction sector, very affected by the crisis of new construction, anticipates the elimination of 150,000 jobs by 2025 and a decline in activity for 2023 in France, announced Wednesday the president of the French Federation of Building (FFB). "By 2025, if nothing is done, so if we let the new construction crisis begin, the building activity will decline by about 8% excluding price effects, or 14 billion euros less. This will be followed by a real rise in insolvencies and a fall in employment, with nearly 150,000 job losses," Olivier Salleron said at a press conference.

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"We are entering a recession at the general level"

The FFB, which in the spring expected 100,000 job losses by 2025, had already raised this figure to 135,000 in early July, after the government had announced the gradual end of the Pinel support scheme for new construction and the tightening of the zero-interest loan (PTZ) for home ownership. If the end of the year still benefits from order books "which remain at a good level", the sector nevertheless revises downwards (-0.2% in volume) its 2023 forecast for the entire building activity, whereas it previously expected +0.7%.

"We are entering recession at the general level for this year 2023, which was not expected," insisted Olivier Salleron. In detail, new construction fell more than expected (-3.1%) mainly due to housing (-5.1%). New non-residential remains almost stable while improvement-maintenance, which represents more than half of the sector's activity, is doing well (+2%). In new housing, housing starts dropped 16.9% in the first seven months of 2023, compared to the same period of the previous year. A movement that, according to the FFB, can only "increase", since building permits fall by nearly 28.3% and sales of individual houses, by 38.1%.

If business insolvencies remain contained, at 4.6% below their level of the first eight months of 2019, they increase "by nearly 39% between the first eight months of 2022 and 2023," warned Olivier Salleron. The only positive elements are the return of public procurement (administrative buildings, schools) and the almost doubling of MaPrimeRénov', the government's flagship energy renovation aid scheme. To limit the extent of the crisis, the FFB is calling in particular for the redeployment of the PTZ on 40% of the territory and the revaluation of its scales.