French Inflation Accelerates to 3.1% as Cost-of-Living Protests Widen

French consumer prices accelerated in September as protests over living costs and education widened, adding inflation to a backdrop of flat output and 8.3% unemployment.

France’s domestic consumer price index rose 3.1% from a year earlier, up from 2.4% in August. Its separate EU-harmonized index increased to 3.4% from 2.6%. In the United States, annual consumer price inflation rose to 3.7% from 3.4%.

All three readings show faster price growth, but the French and U.S. indexes use different methods. France’s 3.4% figure comes from its harmonized measure, while its 3.1% figure comes from its domestic index. Neither provides a directly equivalent measure to the U.S. rate.

Demonstrations on Oct. 17 included demands over living costs and education.

The economic figures show another difference. French output was unchanged in the second quarter from the first, while U.S. output grew 0.6% over the same interval. The U.S. quarterly increase corresponds to a 2.2% annualized rate. Using the quarterly figures puts the output changes on the same time basis.

France’s unemployment rate was 8.3% in the second quarter, including 21.6% among people ages 15 to 24. U.S. unemployment stood at 4.2% in September. Those labor readings cover different periods, even as both add context to the inflation figures.

The wage measures also cover different groups. In France, the average negotiated increase under company-level agreements was 1.7% from a year earlier in the second quarter. Sector-level negotiated wage floors rose 1.1% over the same period. Average hourly earnings for employees on U.S. private nonfarm payrolls rose 3.0% over the year through September.

Negotiated increases and wage floors are different from average earnings, and the French and U.S. figures cover different periods. They therefore cannot establish a direct comparison of workers’ purchasing power in the two countries.