Even if this new confinement should not cost as much as that of the spring, the economy should still be strongly impacted and the economic recovery much more complicated.

Daniel Fortin takes stock of a current economic issue.

The reconfinement announced this Wednesday by Emmanuel Macron promises to be a second massive shock after the first wave of last March, the question this morning is very simple, can the French economy resist?

So the answer is yes even if it will be very hard, of course, in a lot of sectors, but the economists questioned all do roughly the same analysis in fact this new shock will be much less strong than that of last spring.

Why ?

Because this time, production is not going to stop in the country as it had been during the spring containment.

People will continue to go to work or work from home, so the loss of GDP will be less.

In the spring, each month of confinement had cost around 60 billion euros to the GDP, this time it will be much less.

So the boss of Medef who spoke at the beginning of the week of a risk of collapse of the French economy has exaggerated?

So not quite because if this shock is less severe, the problem is that it hits a very weak economy.

Businesses no longer earn money, they are heavily in debt.

Many businesses are already dying, 800,000 jobs have been destroyed and it is this context that makes business leaders feverish.

If we take a single example, that of tourism, it lost nearly 70 billion euros during the first shock, or more than a third of its annual activity.

Today, the occupancy rate of restaurants and hotels has fallen to 44% and the new turn of the screw announced last night will obviously not help matters.

But after the first confinement we saw a rapid recovery in the economy, can't that happen again this time?

It is of course hope.

During the summer, growth took off again very strongly thanks to the consumption of households which had returned to their level of consumption before Covid-19.

But this time, experts do not believe in reproducing this scenario.

In early October, INSEE already pointed to a risk of a relapse in the economy.

The reason is that the mistrust of households and businesses is greater in the face of a pandemic whose end we do not see, so the first save, the second stop investing.

Result, even if the epidemic slows down following the measures announced on Wednesday, the resumption of activity may this time be very slow.

Daniel Fortin replaces Nicolas Barré this Thursday, October 29, 2020.