Lionel Laurent, Columnist

France Is Working Less and Earning More

Olympic-sized pay deals to avert strikes show the limits of Macron’s reforms.

May 3, 2024 at 4:00 AM UTC

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist writing about the future of money and the future of Europe. Previously, he was a reporter for Reuters and Forbes.

May Day protesters in Paris show what they think of the Olympics.
Photographer: ALAIN JOCARD/AFP

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May Day was a big deal in France last year: Almost 1 million protesters took to the streets over President Emmanuel Macron’s unpopular push to get people to work longer and retire later. But this year, only about 120,000 people turned out, the protest equivalent of a Gallic shrug.

Could this be the sign that the French are on board with Macron’s pro-jobs “revolution”? Don’t count on it.