Saint Pierre and Miquelon's economy: from cod to public money

What the islands lived on before the cod ended

For two centuries the archipelago's income came from one fish. The history article follows the French fleets on the Grand Banks, the outfitters of Saint-Pierre and the long decline after 1904. From the 1950s the fishery became industrial, with modern trawlers working from Saint-Pierre, and French Wikipedia records that in the best years fish exports covered close to half of the islands' import bill. After the arbitral award of 10 June 1992 cut the islands' zone to a corridor and Canada declared its cod moratorium in July 1992, the IEDOM describes a single-industry structure brought into question, with market activity giving way step by step to administered services. Saint-Pierre et Miquelon La 1ère put it in 2023 as the end of the cod monoculture.

The processing plants went next. A fisherman told AFP in September 2026 that the islands' two canneries closed at the same moment, in 2011. The archipelago had several hundred fishermen in the industrial years and about 80 by 2026, according to the same report, and the IEDOM records that the processing plants at Saint-Pierre and Miquelon have both been idle since 2022.

How public administration became the economy

The most recent accounts for the islands are those for 2015, published by the IEDOM and the CEROM partnership. They put gross domestic product at €240 million at current prices, or €39,778 a head, against €28,327 a head in 2008. A study commissioned in 2018 by the local development company Archipel Développement, with European funding, corrected the figure for purchasing power and found €24,463 a head at national price levels for 2015.

Public administration was the largest producer by far. It generated 45.3% of value added in 2015, commerce 11.4%, energy and industry 5.6% and construction 4.8%, while agriculture, livestock and fishing stayed under 1%. Services as a whole made up 88% of value added.

Jobs follow the same pattern. In 2021 the service sector held 86.6% of employment, and public administration, education, health and social work alone held 49.4%, against 31.7% for France outside Mayotte.

Why public pay sets the level of incomes

Public salaries in the archipelago are indexed above metropolitan levels, and the sources disagree on how far. French Wikipedia gives an indexation of 40 to 60% for the near third of workers paid from public funds; the Université Laval language atlas gives a 70% uplift for French civil servants who take a posting there, and puts the share of people working in some way for the public sector near 60%. The IEDOM recorded average declared income of €46,401 for public employees against €30,313 for private-sector employees in 2023. The legal minimum wage was €11.88 an hour from 1 November 2024, a gross €1,801.80 a month for a 35-hour week.

What the fishery catches now

The fishery survives as a smaller trade in other species. Between 1 April 2024 and 31 March 2025 the archipelago's boats landed 2,975 tonnes, up from 2,106 the season before, and the rise came almost entirely from sea cucumber, 2,164 tonnes. Cod has become a minor catch: the IEDOM records that local fishermen landed a little under ten tonnes in the season, against a cod quota for the islands of 241.8 tonnes in 2024 in the 3PS zone off southern Newfoundland. Snow crab fell 20.1% with the stock. Halibut is now sold mainly to North America, and in 2024 a boat from the islands fished in waters managed by the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization for the first time in more than a decade.

The fleet counted 19 vessels in 2024, three of them licensed to fish far offshore. The IEDOM describes a market with no fish auction, built on processing plants that bought the catch, and with both plants idle, prefectural exemptions let boats land some species in Canada. The collectivity pays fuel aid of 30% of the cost, capped at €10,000 a vessel, with grants for new and rebuilt boats, and the state's fisheries and aquaculture fund backed nine projects in 2024. The sector held 1.0% of employed people in 2023.

Why almost everything is imported

The islands produce little of what they use, and the trade figures show it. The IEDOM puts imports at €97.6 million in 2024, down 4.4% in value but up 6.5% in volume because of 8,600 tonnes of rock brought from New Brunswick to widen the Avel Mad quay at Miquelon. Canada supplied 46.9% of imports by value, the European Union 39.3%, including 24.3% from metropolitan France, China 7.1% and the United States 1.8%. Canada also supplied 99.8% of the energy imported and half of the food.

Recorded exports were €3.6 million in 2024, after €1.8 million in 2023: halibut sold to the United States, fuel sold to foreign ships, and occasional one-off sales such as an aircraft sold to Colombia in 2022. The IEDOM cautions that catches landed in Canada and not declared to French customs are missing from the figure, which makes the trade balance hard to read.

Why so little food is grown

The climate leaves a growing season of about three months, and the peaty, clay-rich soils suit no cereals. The IEDOM counted eight farms in 2024, four of them raising goats and poultry, and agriculture held 0.4% of employed people in 2023. Most vegetables come from one Miquelon grower using 2,000 m² of open field and under 750 m² of greenhouses, beside an urban farm in Saint-Pierre opened in 2018 that grows vegetables, herbs and mushrooms. Since a land rehabilitation plan launched in 2020, 37 hectares have been worked, 30 of them for fodder, out of about 150 judged recoverable. Sheep farming stopped in 2023 after the Miquelon abattoir closed at the end of 2022, and work to extend it began in September 2024 with €1.15 million of public money, to turn local meat production towards broiler chickens.

How the islands are powered

Energy dependence is total. Ten small wind turbines on Miquelon, 600 kW in all, ran from 2000 to 2014, and since they stopped all primary energy has come as hydrocarbons from Canada, 21,034 tonnes of fuel in 2024. EDF runs a thermal power station on each island, and since 2018 the waste heat of the Saint-Pierre plant has fed a district heating network. The energy plan adopted by decree on 3 October 2023 sets wind targets of 6 MW at Saint-Pierre by 2028, and French Wikipedia gives an aim of 50% renewable energy by 2028. The IEDOM noted that no wind project was scheduled for 2025, and that an electrical link between the two islands, 47 km long, would cost more than €100 million.

How prices follow the Canadian dollar

Because half the imports come from Canada, the IEDOM finds that local prices track Canadian inflation and the exchange rate between the euro and the Canadian dollar: when the euro rises against it, imports get cheaper. The consumer price index rose 9.3% in 2022, a record that the IEDOM attributes to shipping costs, the war in Ukraine and the fall of the euro against the Canadian dollar. Inflation slowed to 5.0% in 2023 and 3.0% in 2024, when one euro bought 1.48 Canadian dollars on average. Electricity rose 26.1% in 2023 and 14.1% in 2024.

The prices of fuel oil and a few other goods are still fixed by prefectural order, and a basket of products is held under a price agreement. The local tax code has no value added tax, and customs duties on imports from any origin fund the local budget, as the politics article describes. Freight reaches the islands on a subsidised sea link from Halifax run under a public service contract, according to French Wikipedia, and fuel comes by tanker for the archipelago's single importer, which also stores and distributes it.

Why the islands are short of workers

The labour market is tight in every measure the IEDOM uses. The estimated unemployment rate was 3.0% in 2024, against 7.3% in France outside Mayotte, with 96 jobseekers on average in the main category. The activity rate of people aged 15 to 64 was 81.7% in 2021. In a survey of employers published in January 2024, 82% reported difficulty recruiting, citing the lack of local workers, competition between public and private employers, the cost of living and the shortage of housing.

The cause underneath is the population. The IEDOM records a fall of 0.3% a year on average since the early 2000s, after growth of 0.7% a year from 1945 to 1999, and La 1ère reported in January 2025 that the decline had reached nearly 1% a year in 2021 and 2022. Deaths have outnumbered births every year since 2016 except 2021: the prefecture recorded 56 deaths and 28 births in 2024. Young people leave to study in France or Canada and many do not return; the share aged 15 to 29 fell from 19.7% in 1999 to 12.8% in 2021. Credit to businesses fell for the fourth year running in 2024, by 4.7% to €44.5 million, and the IEDOM links the caution to uncertainty over the population.

What the collectivity is betting on

Tourism is the sector the plans single out. The collectivity's strategic development scheme for 2010 to 2030 and its action plan for 2021 to 2025 name sustainable tourism as the priority, and European funds of €27 million for 2021 to 2027 back it. In 2024 the islands recorded 23,705 foreign visitors, up 71.4%, carried by 13,522 cruise passengers from 19 ships, and 25 calls were planned for 2025. Hotels and restaurants still produced only about 2% of value added in 2015 and employed 4.2% of the workforce in 2023, and the IEDOM estimates that tourism touches 8.4% of jobs directly or indirectly.

The state and the collectivity have committed €74.7 million under a convergence contract for 2024 to 2027, €28.3 million from the state and €46.4 million from the collectivity, covering the ports, housing, energy, the relocation of Miquelon and the dikes. Newer projects look to space and data. AFP reported in September 2026 that a French submarine cable from Brittany to New York is to land at Saint-Pierre, with service expected in 2030, that the start-up Look Up plans a €20 million space-surveillance radar on the islands for 2028, and that €19 million was promised to rebuild the Quai du Commerce. The European Union's Galileo satellite positioning system already has a sensor station there, its only installation in North America. Offshore oil has been a hope for decades: an exploration well was drilled in the southern corridor in 2001, and prospecting continued afterwards.