Thursday, 11 Jun 2020 05:16 PM MYT
PARIS, June 11 — France should speed up its gradual return to work and business activity, French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said today as new data showed the economy lost half a million jobs in the first quarter alone. “I want economic activity to resume more quickly,” Le Maire told LCI television, adding he wanted activity to be back to normal by this summer.
Already in the first quarter, more than 500,000 jobs were lost, largely because short-term contracts were not renewed as the economy went into lockdown, data from the INSEE official statistics agency showed today.