"The Payroll and the Shopping Cart": Is Happy Globalization Possible?<

The book. Faced with globalisation, European citizens oscillate between appetence and concern. According to a 2017 Eurobarometer survey, 54% of them consider globalization to be positive for their country, but 63% point out that it tends to increase social inequalities and 38% believe that it threatens employment. “Globalization has offered more opportunities, variety and lower prices, while exacerbating the valuation of skills and adaptability. This drew a clear line between winners and losers,” analyzes Lionel Fontagné in La Feuille de pays et le Caddie (Sciences Po Les Presses).

On the one hand, a rather young, educated, well-paid and urban population. She will easily forgive this professor of economics at the University of Paris-I-Panthéon-Sorbonne for having given her so little space. His book focuses on the losers of globalization, those whose professional skills are hard to convert and who live far from large, diversified employment pools.

Word to the prosecution: globalization has displaced or eliminated the most routine tasks and concentrated the most adaptable employees in non-repetitive tasks such as the implementation of new technologies, supervision, management and resolution of problems. It has cut jobs in companies exposed to competitive pressure from emerging countries.

If you weren't taught how to fold a plastic bag by your mom there is no hope for you as an adult

— Hoosain. Mon Apr 10 19:17:48 +0000 2017

"The tasks that cannot be relocated most often require a presence in large cities, and only the most productive companies can pay the additional cost induced by such a location, the best-paid jobs, and, more broadly, , economic prosperity have been concentrated geographically,” explains the professor at the Paris School of Economics.

Feeling of social downgrading

In countries with a high level of remuneration, employees located in the middle of the distribution of qualifications were the most affected. “Finally, the capital share has increased at the expense of the wage share where labor market institutions do not protect the lowest wages. There are therefore real losers, for whom the drop in the price of the shopping cart does not compensate for the negative impact of globalization on the payroll. “These losers have very specific skills, are employed in employment areas that are not very diversified and struggle to retrain, live outside large cities, where service activities are developing, offering new job opportunities. »

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