The reality of France’s productivity and GDP

Total GDP can be broken down into market GDP and non-market GDP (which essentially results from general government). The problem is that non-market GDP is estimated based on general government wages. When we compare France with Germany or the euro zone excluding France, we see that labour productivity in general government is low in France, which is not reflected in the conventional measure of this productivity. If we correct for this measurement bias, we arrive at a downward correction in French GDP and labour productivity of 2% to 6% in 2019, depending on the indicators selected and on whether France is compared against Germany or the euro zone as a whole.