French lawmakers will hold a no-confidence vote in the fragile minority government of Prime Minister Michel Barnier on Wednesday, as economists warn the political stalemate likely to ensue will come at a high economic cost.

Two so-called “motions of censure” filed by both the left-wing and far-right opposition parties will be debated and voted on from 4 p.m. local time. The administration is widely seen as likely to be ousted, just three months after it was formed. If the government collapses, Barnier — who failed to find compromise within the heavily-divided National Assembly to pass a 2025 budget bill aimed at reducing the hefty French deficit — will then be forced to tender his resignation to President Emmanuel Macron.

From there, uncertainty reigns. Macron will eventually need to name a new prime minister, after already struggling to make such an appointment in the wake of the snap summer election which delivered the most votes to the left-wing coalition, but did not give any party a majority. Long-time minister Barnier had been seen as a technocratic compromise.

“Once Barnier resigns, Macron will likely ask him to continue as a caretaker. The alternative option of formally renominating Barnier looks unlikely given the manifest lack of a majority,” Carsten Nickel, deputy director of research at Teneo, said in a Tuesday note.

This caretaker status could drag on for months, since fresh elections cannot be held until next year, while another possibility is Macron’s resignation triggering presidential elections within 35 days, Nickel said.

He added that such a series of events would leave the budget bill unpassed, with a last-minute deal appearing improbable.

The caretaker government is therefore likely to present a special constitutional law which would “effectively roll over the 2024 accounts without any of the previously envisaged spending cuts or tax hikes, while empowering the government to keep collecting taxes,” he said.

Amid the turmoil, French borrowing costs are climbing while the euro has been caught up in negative sentiment — exacerbated by bleak manufacturing data from the euro area and concurrent political volatility in Germany.

“France is facing a prospect of a growing fiscal deficit that will become more expensive to finance as their [government bond] yields rise amid this uncertainty,” analysts at Maybank said in a note Wednesday.

Economists had already trimmed their growth forecasts for France following the publication of the budget proposal in October, given its sweeping tax hikes and public spending cuts.

Analysts at Dutch bank ING, who previously forecast French growth slowing from 1.1% in 2024 to 0.6% in 2025, said Tuesday that the fall of Barnier’s government “would be bad news for the French economy.”

They also predicted the passing of a provisional budget mirroring the 2024 framework.

“Such a budget will not rectify the trajectory of public spending,” they said, throwing out Barnier’s target of reducing the public deficit from 6% of GDP to 5% in 2025 — which would mean France would not move toward meeting the European Union’s new fiscal rules.

“At a time when economic growth in France is slowing markedly, this is bad news. The public deficit will remain high, debt will continue to grow and the next government – whenever that may be – will have an even tougher task to put public finances right,” the ING analysts said.

Gilles Moëc, group chief economist at AXA, observed in a note Monday that “France can count on large reserves of domestic savings to replace international investors, and the euro area dataflow helps to decouple European from US yields, but in the medium run, directing too much of domestic savings to funding the government can become costly in terms of growth dynamics.”

“Consumer confidence has already declined, and the savings rate could rise further, thwarting the rebound in consumption on which the government is counting to support tax receipts in 2025,” Moëc said.

Available jobs rose in October while hiring fell during a month in which payrolls growth hit their lowest level in nearly four years, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday.

Job openings totaled 7.74 million on the month, up 372,000 from September and more than the Dow Jones estimate for 7.5 million, the BLS said in its Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey. The rate of openings as a share of the labor force rose to 4.6% from 4.4%.

That brought the ratio of available positions to unemployment workers up to 1.1, about half of where it was during the peak of a massive gap between supply and demand in 2022.

Hiring also tailed off at a time when the labor market was disrupted by violent storms in the Southeast as well as two major labor strikes involving dock workers and Boeing. Hires totaled 5.31 million, down 269,000 on the month, lowering the hiring rate to 3.3%. That’s also a decline of 0.2 percentage point.

Layoffs, though, fell to 1.63 million, a decrease of 169,000 from September.

The data comes for a month in which the BLS reported nonfarm payroll growth of just 12,000, the worst month since December 2020.

The Federal Reserve watches the JOLTS report closely for signs of tightness or slack in the labor market. Markets expect the Fed to lower its benchmark borrowing rate by a quarter percentage point when it meets later this month, in part an effort to head off any potential weakness in the labor market.

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said Monday he is anticipating an interest rate cut in December but is concerned about recent trends on inflation that could change his mind.

“Based on the economic data in hand today and forecasts that show that inflation will continue on its downward path to 2 percent over the medium term, at present I lean toward supporting a cut to the policy rate at our December meeting,” Waller said in remarks before a monetary policy forum in Washington.

However, he noted that the “decision will depend on whether data that we will receive before then surprises to the upside and alters my forecast for the path of inflation.”

Waller cited recent data indicating that progress on inflation may be “stalling.”

In October, the Fed’s preferred inflation indicator, the personal consumption expenditures price index, showed headline inflation moving up to 2.3% annually and core prices, which exclude the cost of food and energy, moving up to 2.8%. The Fed targets a 2% rate.

Though the data was in line with Wall Street expectations, it showed an increase from the prior month and was evidence that despite the progress, the central bank’s goal has proved elusive.

“Overall, I feel like an MMA fighter who keeps getting inflation in a choke hold, waiting for it to tap out yet it keeps slipping out of my grasp at the last minute,” Waller said, referring to mixed martial arts. “But let me assure you that submission is inevitable — inflation isn’t getting out of the octagon.”

Markets expect the Fed to lop another quarter percentage point off its benchmark overnight borrowing rate when it meets Dec. 17-18. That would follow a half-point cut in September and a quarter-point reduction in November.

“As of today, I am leaning toward continuing the work we have started in returning monetary policy to a more neutral setting,” Waller said.

Waller said he will watch incoming employment and inflation data closely. The Bureau of Labor Statistics this week will release reports on job openings and nonfarm payrolls, the latter coming after gains in October came in at a paltry 12,000, due largely to labor strikes and weather issues.

Even with the slowing progress on inflation, Waller said broader economic health has him feeling like it will be appropriate to continue to ease monetary policy.

“After we cut by 75 basis points, I believe the evidence is strong that policy continues to be significantly restrictive and that cutting again will only mean that we aren’t pressing on the brake pedal quite as hard,” he said.