The number of hours worked per inhabitant in France is almost the lowest among developed economies. Blame it on the difficulties of integrating young people and the early departures of seniors from the labor market.
Do the French not work enough? It is a sensitive subject, especially in the midst of a social movement against pension reform. Because beyond the issue of the financial balance of the pension system, the other objective pursued by the government through the extension of the legal retirement age is to increase the quantity of work in the country and hence potential growth.
For several years, from Emmanuel Macron to Bruno Le Maire via Olivier Dussoptthe executive insists that the French do not work enough compared to their neighbor.
What is it really? If we compare the weekly working time of the French with that of other major economies, there is nothing to be ashamed of. With an average of 36.9 hours per week according to theOECD in 2021, French workers (employees and self-employed combined) are even above the average of those of the major economies (36.8 hours) and even very much above countries often taken as an example for their economic success such as Germany (35 hours), Denmark (34.5 hours), the Netherlands (31.4 hours) or Switzerland (36.2 hours). An active Frenchman works on average 2 hours more than a German each week.
The problem thickens when we take the number of hours worked over a year. With an average of 1,490 hours worked in 2021, the French worker is this time well below the average of OECD (1716 hours) and is even far behind the Italian (1669 hours), the Spanish (1641 hours), the Swiss (1533 hours) or the British (1497 hours). No more RTT, part-time, non-working days… These are the reasons put forward by OECD economists to explain this French shift.
France almost last
But there again, nothing prohibitive when we compare ourselves to certain high-performance economies. As with German workers who, with 1349 hours per year, work on average 140 hours less than the French while having a higher GDP per capita. This low number in Germany is mainly explained by the very significant use of part-time work by women in Germany.
Ditto for the Danes (1363 hours), the Dutch (1417 hours) or the Swedes (1444 hours). A productive fabric with high added value as well as a significant participation of the population in the labor market can make it possible to be prosperous even with a lower working time per person.
But this is where France fails. If we take the quantity of annual work no longer per worker, but this time per inhabitant – that is to say by including the inactive, retired and unemployed in the calculation – this time the country is almost dead last within the OECD.
According to data provided by the organization to BFM Business, with 630 hours on average in 2021 (655 in 2022 but the OECD does not have the data for all countries that year), the French are those who work the less (just ahead of the Turks). The OECD average is 805 hours.
Especially this time, Germany is ahead with 725 hours, or 95 more per year. In Denmark, we are at 709 hours, in Sweden 702 hours, in Switzerland 896. Even countries which have a higher unemployment rate than France, such as Spain or Italy, have a higher quantity of work per inhabitant than France. . It is thus 685 hours for the Spaniards and 704 hours for the Italians.
A French dropout which is explained by a lower employment time (share of working people in the total population) than elsewhere. In other words, active French people work a lot, but the French are more rarely active than elsewhere.
If with more than 68%, this employment rate is the highest in France since 1975 according to INSEE, it remains despite everything the lowest among the major economies. In Germany, more than 77% of the inhabitants were active at the end of 2022, in Denmark it is 76.7%, in the Netherlands 82%, in the United Kingdom 76% or 77% in Sweden. If France had the employment rate of Germany, i.e. 13% more, GDP would therefore potentially be 300 billion euros higher (2354 billion in 2022).
The difficulty of the French labor market lies at both ends. Less well-trained young people who are more difficult to integrate. Seniors leaving earlier.
“France is struggling to integrate young people into employment, especially the less qualified, and almost as much to keep the over 54s in employment, summarizes Antoine Goujard, economist at the France office of the OECD. that people work for a shorter life cycle in France than elsewhere in the OECD: the effective exit age from the labor market is the second lowest of all OECD countries for men and the seventh lower for women.
The employment rate of the over 55s has certainly risen sharply over the past 20 years in France, but it is still down the European average.
“Even if the retirement age is a societal choice, the costs of early retirement both for individuals (lower pensions) and for society (giving up other collective projects) can be very high. “, summarizes the economist of the OECD.