It’s not the entire country that stops working but there’s indeed a significant reduction. If you don’t have children you’d have to be crazy to take time off work during the school holidays in summer (and also like the heat if you’re going somewhere in France because nowhere has mild temperatures anymore).
The legal minimum for full time jobs is 5 weeks but most people have more since they have jobs where you get extra rest time since you work more than 35h/week. Some affluent French people go skiing 2-3 times a year for a week or two each time and then also take two weeks off in summer, all paid.
I used to have 56 paid days off (that’s 11 weeks because Saturday and Sunday didn’t count) each year because I worked a lot more than the legally mandated hours and I had advantageous time credit for showing up early and leaving late and 4 days extra because I never took time off during school holidays (incentive to keep the shifts fully staffed). The pay was shit but at least I could go on trips all the time. I did end up getting a lot of those days paid instead because I didn’t have enough money to travel all the time and I couldn’t be bothered to stay home.
With this much time off our productivity was still very good, everything was timed and we always went above 100% of targets and long-term projects always done early.
Blue collar work in the USA looks like a scam in comparison: working the same job I would have had less purchasing power (sure the numbers entering your bank account are higher, but the health insurance alone cancels it out), more working hours and a lot less paid leave.
Even in 2016 when I had mine done it had to be done abroad even though I lived in a country where any consenting adult can ask to be sterilised without legally mandated delays or any nanny state bullshit. I was poor otherwise I could have sued half the urologists in the country because they gave wrong reasons for refusing like me not having children and me being young.
One also scammed me by sending me to a psychiatrist buddy of his who just went on to spend 30 minutes insulting my intelligence for wanting to not bring children into this world. I’m glad I learned the lesson at that age that just because people are doctors it doesn’t mean they’re not disrespectful and/or stupid.