Partial unemployment risks becoming a wave of mass layoffs, which is the great fear at the top of the state. At this stage, France has 12 million people on partial unemployment, a hole in activity that companies fear. 

This is the great fear at the top of the state and in businesses: that partial unemployment will lead to massive layoffs in the weeks and months to come ...

Yes it is a very real fear indeed. Faced with the fall in activity, French companies have submitted partial unemployment claims for 12 million employees. This gives you an idea of ​​the business hole that businesses fear. I would point out: they have not put 12 million people on short-term work at this stage, they have made requests to this extent. The number of people actually arrested is more like half, which still amounts to several million. As long as the state pays these employees, the social consequences of the crisis are largely erased. But you can see that if we do not quickly find the level of turnover before the crisis, a large part of these employees may fall into unemployment altogether.

Hence plans for mass layoffs ...

See what's going on around us. For example in air transport: several large companies, Lufthansa, the Scandinavian SAS, English and American companies have announced plans to reduce their workforce considerably. But not Air France-KLM. Is it sustainable? Not sure. In the automobile, same thing. When we talk with business leaders, what they often say is that they have too much capacity compared to the market, that we will have to somehow shrink their production tool because demand will not find not its previous level before long. And that necessarily means staff reductions to come. Hence the idea of ​​a recovery plan which the government is working on by the end of August. Otherwise, as Edouard Philippe said, there is a real risk of the economy collapsing…