Today's employees are yesterday's children

We are going through a complex period because we are currently being hit by forces that can be contradictory. We are in an almost schizophrenic world, we are told about points of tension and unpredictability on the one hand, while on the other we have a daily life that is not so heavy-going. Your businesses are going through a recovery phase, with an acceleration. Let's put into perspective the moment we are living in to help you look forward to the short, medium and long term.

This is a difficult exercise because it is multifactorial. Inflation is an example; its consequences will be less visible for you, but it will create social tensions in poorer countries. At the beginning of the 2010s, the Arab Spring was a consequence of inflation in commodity and agricultural prices.

We are in a period where a lot of information is coming in and it is very difficult to classify it.

Short-term post-crisis mechanisms

In the very short term, i.e. up to summer, there is not much to worry about. In Europe, and in France in particular, we are behind the cycle when compared to the United States. We are starting to enjoy the demand that was constrained by Covid. People who had saved during the Covid restrictions are now consuming, which benefits the tourism sector. The current peak in consumption is not the consequence of the strength of the economic fabric, but the result of the savings capacity of households during the health crisis.

The financial markets have fallen sharply since the beginning of the year and the Banque de France has revised its growth forecasts for 2022. We were expecting +3.5% and now we are at +2.3%. This deterioration, visible in many sectors of activity and in many places in the world, is...