Around one in five employees in France are employed in the state sector, new data reveals, with this number steadily increasing.
The latest data from national statistics body Insee showed that at the end of 2023, there were close to six million workers employed in ‘la fonction publique’.
This is a 1.1% rise, or an extra 61,900, compared to the end of 2022.
The ‘fonction publique’ covers much more than the ‘civil service’ in the UK, with which it is sometimes associated (the latter, which consists of around 550,000 workers, refers to people employed by central government ministries).
The French term also includes both people with a special fonctionnaire status (sometimes translated as ‘civil servant’ in English) and people on ordinary work contracts, known as contractuels.
Workers in the ‘fonction publique’ are split across three sectors:
Etat, which includes central government workers at ministeries and prefectures as well as state school teachers and university lecturers/researchers, police, tax officials and workers in the legal system
Territoriale, who are those employed in local government jobs on a communal level, departmental, or regional level. This includes local police, firefighters, housing officials, etc
Hospitalière: those working in state hospitals and health centres, as well as in Ehpads (elderly care homes)
However it is worth noting that in some areas, particularly the ‘territoriale’, numbers are only rising due to an increase in contracted workers (those who do not have full ‘civil servant’ status), with the actual number of ‘civil servants’ decreasing slightly.
A drop in military workers in 2023 is largely expected to be counteracted by an increase in defence spending announced by French President Emmanuel Macron this year.
