INSEE confirms a decline in the population from 2037 and accelerated aging by 2070. For leaders, anticipation is no longer an option but an emergency.
L’INSEE has just published its new population projections for 2070. This is no longer a working hypothesis, it is a quantified, documented scenario, and it deserves serious attention, including in general management. Because behind these curves, there are our workforce of tomorrow, our markets, our work organizations.
The figure that should attract attention is simple: if recent demographic trends continue, France would have 65.9 million inhabitants in 2070, or 3.2 million fewer than in 2026. This is not a linear trajectory. The population would first continue to increase until 2037, to reach 69.8 million inhabitants, a rate of growth already significantly lower than that experienced for fifty years. Then, from 2037, it would fall into decline, at an average rate of -118,000 people per year. France would then return to a population level close to that of 2014.
Growth hanging by a thread
What is striking is the origin of this still positive growth until 2037: it would be based exclusively on net migration. The natural balance, the difference between births and deaths, became negative from 2025 and would continue to deteriorate until 2070, under the combined effect of an increase in deaths then a drop in births. In a century, this natural balance would have literally been reversed, going from +308,000 in 1970 to -343,000 in 2070.
In other words, without net migration set at +150,000 people per year in the central scenario, the French population would decline now, and not in eleven years. For a leader, this changes the reading of the subject: the migration issue is not one debate among others, it is already, structurally, what maintains the demographic balance of the country. Alternative hypotheses confirm this: with low net migration, at +70,000 per year, the population would begin to decline from 2028.
An aging population, whatever the scenario chosen
If the exact size of the population remains uncertain, between 61 and 71 million inhabitants in 2070 depending on the fertility or migration hypotheses, one thing is not: aging is a given. The number of people under 45 would fall by 8.9 million by 2070, from 36.3 to 27.3 million. At the same time, the population aged 65 or over would increase by 5.8 million, from 15.3 to 21.1 million. This increase would be driven primarily by those aged 80 or over, whose number would increase from 4.3 to 9 million. The number of centenarians would quadruple, from 37,000 today to 160,000 in 2070.
This shift is reflected in an indicator that every leader should keep in mind: the demographic dependency ratio, that is to say the number of people aged 65 or over per 100 people aged 20 to 64. It would go from 40 in 2026 to 49 from 2040, a trajectory that is almost a foregone conclusion since it depends above all on the life expectancy already acquired and the arrival at 65 of the end-of-baby boom generations. Beyond 2040, uncertainty increases, but the central scenario expects a ratio of 62 percent in 2070. Concretely, the balance between active workers and retirees would continue to deteriorate over the entire period, with no turnaround in sight.
What this means for organizations
For a business, these numbers are not a statistical abstraction. A population of under 45s reduced by 8.9 million people by 2070, this means a market of recruitment structurally more tense, increased competition to attract young workers, and a need to rethink loyalty as well as recruitment. A doubling population aged 80 or over means more helping employees, more dependency support needs, and HR decisions that can no longer be treated as isolated cases.
Finally, net migration is not just a macroeconomic variable. In many sectors, particularly those of home care and support, it is already what makes it possible to fill positions that local generations alone are no longer enough to fill. Treating this question as an exclusively political subject, separated from issues of skills and recruitment, is to deprive oneself of part of the answer.
Anticipate rather than endure
INSEE does not predict the future, it tag the most probable contours. The margin of uncertainty exists, it is even precisely documented, but the general direction is not: an aging population, a renewal of generations which alone is no longer sufficient to ensure balance, a demographic dependence set to grow over several decades.
These elements are now known. The question is no longer whether these developments will occur, but what each organization will have done with them, in terms of recruitment, social policy and skills anticipation, before they become a constraint rather than a subject for management.
