Inflation: “The proportion of French people who feel this drop in purchasing power is very strong,” says economist Pascale Hébel

This text corresponds to the transcription of part of the interview above. Click on the video to watch the interview in full. Louise Bernard: With the release of strategic stocks, diesel prices are falling, but, at the same time, gas prices are rising again.

Will the drop in fuel prices provide a little relief for motorists? Pascale Hébel: Yes, absolutely. That’s going to be about an 8% drop.

We see that some fell by 20 cents, others by 12 cents yesterday. And in fact, some motorists are currently restricting their travel. So it's going to be a little breath of air to move around a little bit more.

This is a welcome reduction. But, if it does not last and if, in fact, we have these increases which continue to have repercussions on the entire economy, and in particular food prices, we risk having inflation again in January-February which will continue to increase. And so purchasing power, it must be remembered all the same, we are already the second year in 2026, it is quite exceptional that we had a drop in 2025.

This hasn't happened since 1960, has it? Absolutely, the sequence of two years... So it's true that in 2012 it was much stronger, the drop in purchasing power, but these are two consecutive years of a drop of 0.4%, 0.5% probably in 2026. And so the question is: will it drop again in 2027?

And there, it’s true that it’s going to be dramatic because it increases inequalities. We know that inequalities are indeed increasing. Poverty has never been higher.

And so at the moment, we really have categories of the population who are suffering a lot. There is a very strong feeling about this purchasing power crisis. This is also a striking lesson that we see in recent opinion studies.

What was alarming was that in fact, on household confidence, the latest indicator from INSEE which was released in October, we really had a drop in perception on this question of purchasing power. It's true that I really observe that the French are very much in agreement on what is really happening. We had a small gap in purchasing power, but there has really been a catch-up and therefore the proportion of French people who feel this drop in purchasing power is very strong, but they also see inflation coming, that is to say they are very clear-eyed about what is happening.

So obviously it’s very distressing and it’s a bit of this anger that we see in the streets today. And this is why there has not been an increase in the minimum wage as strong as in other countries. In particular, we only follow inflation while there are many countries in Europe where we are going higher to reduce inequalities, and in France this is not the case.

Machine-translated from French