Résilience économique et disparité territoriale. Quelles leçons retenir de la crise de 2008 ?

The economic crisis of 2008 was one of the most severe that Europe has experienced so far. The impact of the crisis has been extremely variable from one region to another at the European level, raising the issues of solidarity and territorial cohesion. Thus, while a new crisis is coming due to the coronavirus pandemic, not all territories have yet recovered their 2007 employment levels. In this context, the article examines the economic resilience of French territories, at the level of the intermunicipalities. Based on ten years of detailed observation of variations in private employment, we compare not only employment dynamics, but also the intensity of losses and the capacity to rebound, while we also introduce the temporality of these effects through the notion of the resilience cycle. The results show the diversity of economic trajectories and territorial disparities in terms of resilience. Disparities, in terms of resilience, are more marked between regions than between metropolises and the rest of the territory in the short term. Over the long term, the "metropolis-hinterland" divide within the regions hardest hit by the crisis is increasing. In most of these areas, employment certainly began to rise again after 2009, but more slowly than elsewhere, not enough to make up for the losses. Here, the COVID-19 crisis may not be stronger than elsewhere, but it will hit areas (and households) that were already highly precarious at the start of the pandemic.