While there were fears of an explosion in unemployment due to the health crisis, INSEE announced on Thursday that the labor market would return to its pre-crisis level before the end of the year.

Daniel Fortin takes stock of a current economic issue.

It's a good surprise, there will not be, as we feared, an explosion in unemployment, it is even the opposite, INSEE announced on Thursday that the labor market will have even returned to its previous level. -crisis at the end of this year.

Economically at least, the Covid episode will have been quickly erased, it is also hard to believe when we read the figures, the INSSE announced on Thursday that the unemployment rate will end at 8% this year, we are very far from the catastrophic figures that were announced a few months ago since we were talking about 10 or even 11%, France will even have 320,000 additional jobs at the end of 2021, so we are in the presence of a very dynamic labor market, if we add to this the expected rebound of the economy which will be at least 6% this year again according to INSEE, we are facing a radiant landscape where we expected rather a dull plain.

However, the government is careful not to claim victory.

He even decided to let public spending slip away a little more next year, no question of slackening too quickly the effort to support the economy initiated during the Covid, no question of counting on the only expected recovery to get out. France of the crisis, result according to a preparatory document for the 2022 budget drawn up by Bercy, the growth in expenditure excluding specific measures related to Covid will be one and a half%, a higher cruising rate than expected, result, the deficit will still remain high in 2022 with 5.3% of GDP.

What these figures say is that there is no question of returning to rigor in the management of our public finances, especially since we will be in a presidential election year.

Who will benefit from this new spending?

Well the three ministries that are doing the best will be Defense, Interior and Education with sharply increasing appropriations,

Justice and Research will also have a boost, and what should be noted is that like all his predecessors, Emmanuel Macron will have broken his promise to reduce the number of civil servants, he had announced a reduction of 120,000 positions during his presidential campaign, finally the numbers will be stable, it is decidedly not easy to make the state thin in our country.

Daniel Fortin replaces Nicolas Barré this Friday, July 2, 2021.