France

Abstract

The sensitivity of the economy to variations in the cyclical situation has changed since the last war. Whereas previously in France, as in other countries with liberal economies, the cycles described by the classical economists with their alternating upward phases (increased production, higher wages and prices) and crises (falling production, wages and prices, failure of numerous enterprises, increased unemployment) used to be clearly discernible, these cycles are very much less marked today. To take unemployment as an example, the rise in which was always the most spectacular and dramatic aspect of these economic crises, it has hardly reappeared as a factor to be reckoned with since the war; the number of jobless has remained constant below the 200,000 mark, an extremely low figure which appears to be made up largely of the ‘chronic unemployable’ and persons in the process of changing their jobs.