Réduction du temps de travail et tensions sur les facteurs de production

From 1997 to 2000, French growth came with increasing tensions in production factors. This fact is usual during economic growth. Nevertheless, work-sharing policy that was applied in France during the same period may have increased constraints on production. We used a French firm panel data, a quarterly business survey of industrial firms, between 1995 and 2001 and compared 35-hour firms and firms which didn't share work. We found that 35-hour firms had more short-term hiring problems and more short-term production bottleneck than similar firms which didn't share work. But there are no long- term differences between them. Moreover, hiring problems are more important when 35-hour firms try to hire skilled workers. However, these higher tensions are not an evidence that work-sharing policy reduced growth. They could be also an indication that 35-hour firms hired more.