The Medef, the French employers' federation, held its rentrée at the Paris Longchamp racecourse. The Rencontre des Entrepreneurs de France opened with a statement of great concern over the current political crisis. Businesses are struggling. Public employment is not!

The workforce in the three public functions (civil servants in the strict sense and contractors) was 5,674,000 people at the end of 2021. These numbers have increased by one million public agents! Compared to 1997, this represents a 22% increase, while employment in the private sector has increased by 17%, and the population by 13% over this period. The pace of public hiring is faster than the birth rate! It’s just mind-boggling! Especially since the French can see a real deterioration in their public services! Let's add that absenteeism in public functions, particularly at the territorial level, is reaching new heights: the Court of Auditors has estimated the direct cost of unworked days at between 11.1 and 11.9 billion euros for all three public functions. If public sector absenteeism were aligned with that of the private sector, experts at Rue Cambon estimate that the State budget could save nearly 2 billion euros!

The major regional reform implemented under Hollande is a fiasco: not only has it not improved governance, but it has also led to an explosion of public hiring. French over-administration has gone hand in hand with the growth of the "administrative mille-feuille" (layered administrative structure). Regions, departments, cities, communities of municipalities... A fiasco.

The public hospital represents one of the most terrifying examples: this over-administered sector is preparing to cut 1,500 intern positions! Administrative positions have multiplied at the expense of caregivers, whom patients most need. The nightmare reaches its peak in the summer when city doctors are on vacation and emergency rooms are overwhelmed. The public hospital is plunged into a form of agony that is accelerating. The French, who are paying more and more taxes, cannot accept that the effectiveness of their public services is collapsing to finance public employment! It's absurd.

Moreover, private employment could suffer heavily from a sudden increase in the minimum wage, which is on the agenda of the Nouveau Front Populaire (NFP). Gabriel Attal had described the increase in the minimum wage to 1,600 euros net per month promised by the NFP as a "job-destroying machine." According to the resigning Prime Minister, this increase would destroy "500,000 jobs" in the private sector. A sudden increase in the minimum wage would be an economic disaster that would destabilize our SMEs and craftsmen. "Purchasing power can only increase significantly and sustainably if production also increases, which implies working more or better," reminds Sylvain Bersinger, chief economist at Asterès. The French political world has its irrationalities that economic rationality cannot ignore.

The current outlook is very bleak for French small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which are nevertheless the largest providers of jobs in this country. At the moment, French SMEs are disappearing at a staggering rate: 63,000 business failures last July, over one year (Bank of France figures). This is almost the historic peak of early 2015. The impact on private employment will be significant in the coming months. Already, although rarely mentioned, 30,000 business owners lost their jobs in the first half of the year, a fifth more than last year at the same time, according to the GSC association and the Altares firm.

It is then understandable that household consumption, historically the engine of French growth, is no longer supported, in the long term, only by public spending (civil servant salaries and massive hiring in public services). But this model is no longer funded. And no longer fundable. Paris is in a financial dead end. The country's debt has exploded over the years. This "state consumerism," to use Jérôme Fourquet's term, which is at least four decades old, is completely out of steam. The economic policies since the early 1980s have driven the French nation into a wall. The future is bleak. What new drivers for French growth exist as deindustrialization shakes our trade balance? Not a single politician has the answer.