The purpose of this chapter is to give an overview of the state of the Île-de-France economy at the beginning of the 2020s, to show its significance as a global metropolis and to shine a light on the specificities of the Paris region in comparison with cities of the same importance at the world level.

From deindustrialization to internationalization: the birth of a global city region

With a GDP of €709 billion in 2018 (Choose Paris Region 2020), the Île-de-France region is one of the most powerful and one of the richest in the world (see Table 4.1). Yet its GDP growth is fairly low (averaging 1.3 per cent a year between 2000 and 2015), which distinguishes it from cities such as London (2.4 per cent) and New York (1.6 per cent), where GDP growth has been higher (Parilla, Marchio & Leal Trujillo 2016).

From deindustrialization to tertiarization

By and large, the recent economic history of the region is common to most cities of the Global North, moving from a period of deindustrialization, in parallel with a tertiarization movement, to a gradual internationalization.

Deindustrialization, which began in the 1960s, was initially slow, with the Île-de-France losing “only” 100,000 industrial jobs between 1960 and 1975. This trend accelerated in the following decade, with the region losing 300,000 jobs – i.e. 25 per cent of its industrial workers. Between 1985 and 1994 the decline continued, with an even sharper loss of 350,000 jobs. Then it slowed, but between 1960 and 2000 the haemorrhage of employment was huge, with the region losing more than 50 per cent of its industrial jobs. Since then this process has slowed down, with the region losing only about 100,000 industrial jobs between 2005 and 2018 (Institut Paris Région 2020a).

In parallel, the regional economy followed a tertiarization process. Since the mid-2000s around 87 per cent of added value has come from the service sector (see Table 4.2).

As for Île-de-France's working population, it has been incrementally but steadily increasing since 1999, and stood at more than 6.3 million in 2018, showing a net increase of almost 27 per cent, far above the population growth of 11.4 per cent over the same period (see Table 4.3).