Digital economy: Nantes leads the way in IT job creation

More IT sector jobs are created in Nantes than in any other French city.

"Between 2008 and 2013, digital sector companies created 4,136 jobs in the Nantes area, i.e. an increase of +17%. No other city outside Paris performs better than Nantes in this respect. And that includes Lyon, despite the latter having double the population." The figures have been published following an in-depth study of major French Tech-labelled cities across France conducted by the French newspaper dedicated to business start-ups, Le Journal des Entreprises. In the same period, some 3,200 IT jobs were created in Lyon (+6.9%), with a similar number actually lost in the Aix-Marseille region (-8.9%). And, again, for the same period, Lille and Toulouse only managed to create a third as many jobs in the IT sector as Nantes. So much for the relative figures.

More and more IT jobs in Nantes

In absolute terms, Lyon remains second in the rankings of French cities behind Paris, with some 50,000 jobs in the digital sector, compared with 31,600 in the Aix-Marseille region. At the end of 2013, with 27,941 IT jobs, Nantes was hot on the heels of Lille and Toulouse with 29,000 jobs each.

An ecosystem favourable to IT

"So why is Nantes performing so well compared to the rest of France?", asks the newspaper. The digital sector in Nantes benefits from an ecosystem conducive to the development of startups thanks to the Atlanpole incubator and the Cantine numérique (photo) co-working and event network run by the Atlantic 2.0 cluster. The start-up survival rate also appears to be higher than elsewhere. iAdvize and Lengow regularly make the front pages and are frenetic recruiters.

But, as the newspaper underlines, that's not the whole story: the IT sector in Nantes is also riding the dynamic wave sweeping across Nantes' economy as a whole. The sharp rise in the number of subsidiaries of major players in the IT consulting sector, such as Steria and Accenture, reflect this.

For its rankings, the Journal des Entreprises refers to the definition of the digital sector established by the French Digital Observatory and the OECD, which refers specifically - and uniquely - to employees responsible for digital technologies in ICT companies.

>> Find out more about IT sector job figures in France