Inflation: household consumption fell by 0.8% in February

Baptiste Morin 14:09 pm, March 31, 2023

Household consumption in France fell by 0.8% in February compared to the previous month, affected by lower spending on food and manufactured goods, INSEE reported Friday. After an upward rebound of 1.7% in January, household consumption expenditure suffered from a sharp decline of 1.2% in purchases of food goods and 0.9% for those of manufactured goods in a context of high inflation, while energy consumption remained almost stable (+0.1%), said the National Institute of Statistics.

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Over one year, there is an overall decrease of about 5%. In the case of food products, over one year, it fell by 8.3%. Figures that prove that, for the same price, the number of products in our shopping cart has decreased over the last twelve months. And for good reason: food price inflation is 15.8% in March over one year.

A trompe-l'oeil drop

Inflation, meanwhile, is down in March. How to explain it? This is the effect of energy. This is actually a deceptive drop. Inflation stood at 5.6% in March, after inflation of 6.3% in February. In detail, it is therefore the weight of the fall in energy prices. In March, they were up 4.9% year-on-year - it was 14.1% year-on-year in February.