In 2018, the French economy slowed down: gross domestic product grew by 1.7 % in volume, after +2.3% in 2017. Domestic demand excluding inventory slowed down (contribution of +1.3 points to GDP growth in 2018 against +2.1 points in 2017). Household consumption slackened more (+0.9% after +1.4%) than the purchasing power of gross disposable income (+1.2% after +1.4%). On the public demand side, the collective consumption of general government also slowed down (+0.8% after +1.5%). Investment decelerated sharply in 2018 – especially household investment (+2.0% after +6.6%) – while public investment gathered pace (+2.4% after +0.3%).

Changes in inventories made a negative contribution to the growth of activity in 2018 (–0.3 points after +0.2 points in 2017). However, the contribution of foreign trade improved to +0.7 GDP points against –0.1 point in 2017: in fact, exports slowed but to a lesser extent than imports. The margin rate of non-financial corporations fell substantially (–0.5 points) and stood at 31.2% due to the slowdown in productivity gains and the rise in oil prices.