French have got even lazier, study shows

Famed for their marathon holidays, extended lunches and 35-hour working week, the French have long basked in the enviable image of enjoying life’s pleasures while, somehow, getting the job done.

But the Covid pandemic has taken the French view of a proper work-life balance to new extremes, with a new study claiming that France has succumbed to a “laziness epidemic” in which swathes of the country say they "can't be bothered" to work hard, go out or even socialise.

Many people in France are quite happy to work fewer hours even if that means earning less money, according to findings by Ifop and the Jean-Jaurès foundation.

In 1990, some 60 per cent of French people said work was “very important” in their life, compared to 31 per cent for leisure. Today, those who view work as a high priority has plummeted to 24 per cent while 41 per cent view leisure as very important.

Since the Covid pandemic subsided, 37 per cent of French say they are less motivated to work. The figures vary widely according to political persuasion, with supporters of Leftist leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon being more than twice as likely to say they have lost their will to work than supporters of Emmanuel Macron - 61 per cent to 28 per cent respectively.

Overall, two-thirds are happy to work less to earn less today. By comparison, in 2008 two-thirds of French said they were happy to “work more to earn more”, the presidential campaign slogan of conservative then French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Many workers questioned the meaning of their professional lives when 11 million people were furloughed during the pandemic and benefited from one of the world’s most generous state Covid compensation schemes.

Home working

Home working exacerbated the problem, the study found, because it has entitled an “exhaustion and laziness epidemic when a part of the French want to slow down”.

This unwillingness to work at all costs has seen a huge shortage of labour in various sectors from hospitality to haulage but also teaching and nursing.

The report’s findings suggest many compatriots agree with recent controversial claims by Green MP Sandrine Rousseau that the French deserve a special “right to idleness”.

In September, the radical eco-feminist sparked a furore for claiming that working hard was “essentially a Right-wing value” and that taking breaks and being less productive was a far healthier objective for the Left.

'Right to idleness'

“We have the right to idleness. We have the right to change professions, we also have the right to take breaks in our life and, above all, we need to regain time, a sense of sharing and a four-day week,” she said.

That put her at loggerheads with France’s Communist Party leader, Fabien Roussel, who  declared: “The Left must defend work and not be the Left of handouts and social welfare.”

Another recent Ifop study found that four out of ten people who voted Green or for Mr Mélenchon’s France Unbowed party define themselves as “rarely or not hard-working”, compared to a quarter of French of other political persuasions.

Dominique Seux, an economic commentator on France Inter radio, on Monday said that mass French lethargy posed a small “problem" as it risked cutting productivity at a time when the French “are unhappy with their purchasing power and the state of public services”.

He also pointed to one “massive paradox”, namely that “according to all the OECD’s indisputable data, France is the country that works the least, all ages combined”.