178,000 additional public employees in 5 years: what weight does the civil service have in the French economy?

D-day for Michel Barnier: the newly appointed Prime Minister must deliver his general policy declaration this Tuesday afternoon. On the menu in particular: the budgetary emergency and the recovery of public finances. It should above all be a question of tax increases, however, savings could also be found on the side of the public service. Monday morning on Europe 1 and CNews, Nicolas Sarkozy criticized too many civil servants in France, 5.7 million. And these numbers, which have been increasing continuously for several years, are not helping our finances.

A wage bill equivalent to 12% of GDP

In 2022, France had 178,000 more public employees than in 2017. And this, even though candidate Macron had committed to bending the curve, by eliminating 120,000 positions. The promise was abandoned along the way. Result: public personnel expenditure represents more than 12% of our country’s GDP according to the specialized site Fipeco, placing France in the European lead with the Scandinavian countries.

“I think that we could reduce in France, we would also have to manage to reduce the number of jobs in the public service, by reviewing public service missions and reviewing the administrative organization,” explains François Ecalle, founder of FipEco and public finance specialist.

Provision for civil servants’ pensions?

In addition to the subject of growing numbers, there is also the question of staff pensions, and how to make the system sustainable? This question is also valid in the private sector.

In the state civil service alone, the amounts of pensions paid each year amount to 60 billion euros. For Nicolas Marques, director of the Molinari economic institute, it is by acting on these expenses that the State will find a large part of its savings: “The right solution will be to put money aside at the level of the State, to finance staff pensions This is what the Banque de France did: the Banque de France promised 14 billion (euros, editor’s note) in retirement and it set aside 14 billion, therefore. it is self-financing. If we did it entirely, we would save 60 billion euros per year.”

A significant avenue to try to restore public finances, while half of the deterioration of the French debt in recent years is linked to pensions overall, private sector and public sector included.