+€7 / day+€16 / day per person in work
France’s debt, explained
€3,647,699,444,807
Estimated in real time · method
Latest official figure: €3,596 billion at the end of June 2026, or 119% of GDP: about 14 months of everything the country produces. Over the past year the debt rose by €178 billion.
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Shared across the population
Each dot stands for 10,000 people, placed where they live: 69.1 million inhabitants, overseas departments included.
Zooming into one dot: 10,000 people
Baby, child, worker or retiree: divided by the number of inhabitants, the debt comes to this amount for each of them today. That share grows by about €7 a day, or €2,580 more each year.
Nobody has to repay this personally: it is a way to measure the size of the debt.
What if we only count the people in work?
About 4 in 10 inhabitants have a job (30.6 million), and a large part of taxes and contributions comes out of work income. For each of them, the debt grows by about €16 a day.
Retirees, students and the unemployed pay taxes too (VAT, CSG…): this figure does not say who will pay.
Since when?
Here the debt is compared with the wealth produced each year (GDP). France has not run a budget surplus since 1974: every year it borrows to cover the gap.
Before 1995: national accounts, 2014 base (INSEE). 1995–2025: Eurostat (end of year). Last point: end of June 2026 (INSEE, quarterly). Small series break in 1995.