INSEE unveiled its major annual survey on the regional aeronautics sector on Thursday. Slowly recovering in 2021, the sector is recovering more clearly in 2022. Airbus is taking in orders but supply and recruitment difficulties are hampering the rise in production rates.
After the Covid shock, aeronautical companies are slowly climbing the slope. This is what emerges from the photograph unveiled yesterday by Insee Occitanie. This is the only survey on the regional aeronautics sector conducted each year by INSEE since 1983. In total, 2,520 aeronautics and space companies in the greater south-west were questioned. “After the shock following the health crisis which saw orders from major aircraft manufacturers collapse, turnover is increasing again but unevenly” sums up Lionel Doisneau, head of the Economy division at Insee Occitanie. The rebound is described as “moderate” with an increase of 5.7% with significant disparities between metallurgy, whose activity fell by another 15%, while the manufacture of electronic equipment jumped by 22% and IT by 15%. %.
Turnover still down 30%
No aeronautics sector has returned to its 2019 level, before the covid crisis. “Turnovers are still down 30%” warns Caroline Jamet, the regional director of INSEE. The study, however, relates to a year 2021 that is very different from the current situation of 2022. “Today, orders from aircraft manufacturers are there and airlines want their new aircraft as quickly as possible. The difficulty for suppliers and SMEs is to be able to deliver the parts,” warns Bruno Darboux, president of the Aerospace Valley division.
Inflation and scarcity of raw materials (titanium, aluminum, steel, stainless steel and semi-conductors), shortage of manpower… the aeronautics sector does not have the means to respond to the increase in production rates, however desired by Airbus.
The recovery accelerates in 2022
Faced with this reality, the aeronautical giant has even postponed its ramp-up plan because subcontractors, suppliers and above all engine manufacturers are no longer able to keep up. Airbus aimed to go from 40 A320s per month during the health crisis, to around 60 monthly aircraft this year. The threshold of 65 aircraft has been pushed back from summer 2023 to early 2024 to allow time for the entire supply chain to adapt. On these decisions depends the industrial activity of Occitania, which is very oriented towards aeronautics. The sector (with space) employs 80,000 people in the region for a turnover of 73.4 billion euros. In this context, employment picked up again in 2021 with a still modest increase in the workforce of +0.3%. Toulouse alone gained 1,000 jobs, especially in the engineering and digital professions.
For 2022, more than 90% of business leaders in the sector expect an increase in their turnover. 72% of companies even plan to increase their workforce in 2022, but 80% of them are having difficulty recruiting. This is the complete paradox of the moment. “Some companies had been forced to part with staff in 2020 and are now struggling to regain skills” illustrates Lionel Doisneau of Insee.
It is a cyclical tension for the president of the Aerospace Valley pole: “The aircraft manufacturers including Airbus have between five and ten years of order book. No other industry has such visibility. Gifas* has predicted 15,000 recruitments in France, including around 40% for Occitanie” or around 6,000 positions.