PARIS—For months, Yves Garrec dedicated his Saturdays to slipping on a yellow road-safety vest and hitting the streets in protest. Not any more.
“I’ve put my yellow vest back in the car glove compartment,” the 60-year-old chauffeur says.
Seven months after waves of demonstrations first washed over France—bringing the government to its knees—the yellow-vest movement has run out of steam.
Shops that once boarded their windows every Saturday, bracing for yellow-vest riots, are humming again. President Emmanuel Macron is rebooting the economic overhauls that once fueled yellow-vest ire. The weekly flood of protesters in Paris has become a trickle.
On Saturday, only 7,000 demonstrators took to the streets across the country, according to the French Interior Ministry. That is compared with a quarter million people on Nov. 17 when the movement began as a protest against fuel taxes.
“The movement has lost its essence,” says Jacline Mouraud, a 52-year-old accordionist from Brittany, who sparked the yellow-vest unrest in October by posting online a video that went viral, accusing Mr. Macron of not “giving a darn” about the economic struggles of everyday commuters.
In the end, the yellow-vest movement devoured itself. Prominent protesters publicly turned on each other, creating a leadership vacuum that made it hard to translate public rage into political action.
That failure is apparent, former protesters say, in the movement’s struggle to field candidates for the European Parliament elections, which were held at the end of May. A moment some hoped would mark the movement’s emergence as a new political force on the Continent instead revealed its fragility. Yellow-vest candidates—branded by many in the movement as “sellouts”—garnered less than 1% of the vote.
The flagging support has created an opening for Mr. Macron’s government to regain its footing. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Édouard Philippe detailed the administration’s plans to overhaul the country’s unemployment benefits and pension system. He also pledged to deliver quickly on promises to significantly cut taxes for the working middle class.
There are also signs that Mr. Macron’s earliest reforms, including a loosening of labor-market rules, have begun to lift the economy. Last month, unemployment fell to its lowest level in 10 years, according to the national statistics agency. Consumer confidence, badly bruised at the peak of the yellow-vest crisis, has significantly picked up since the beginning of the year.
Given the volatile nature of the movement, violence could erupt again. Some 2,500 protesters and 1,800 police officers were injured during demonstrations, according to the Interior Ministry. Some yellow vests are planning to block roads across the country next Saturday in a bid to create disruption and recapture people’s attention.
Still, those disturbances are a far cry from the hundreds of thousands who once brought France to a standstill.
Ingrid Levavasseur, a 32-year-old single mother, was targeted by violent yellow-vest demonstrators for her attempt to run for a seat in the European Parliament as the movement’s standard-bearer. Today, she no longer considers herself a yellow vest.
“For me, it’s over,” says Ms. Levavasseur, who opposes violence at protests.
The protests began in November as an act of defiance against the government’s plan to raise fuel taxes, a move intended to help France combat global climate change. It then became a rallying cry against Mr. Macron, perceived by many as an out-of-touch “president of the rich.” Tens of thousands of people started protesting every Saturday throughout the country demanding higher wages, as well as greater social and fiscal justice.
In December, the protests morphed into riots that rampaged down the Champs-Élysées Avenue, leaving stores shattered, cars torched and the Arc de Triomphe defaced.
Mr. Macron, who suffered from a tin ear at the start of the movement, showed some political agility. The president made a burst of concessions at the end of the year, calling off the fuel-tax increase and boosting the incomes of minimum-wage earners. He then mounted a monthslong listening tour that took him to small villages across the country, turning the tide of public opinion against the yellow vests.
On Saturday, life was back to normal on the Champs-Élysées Avenue. Tourists strolled by storefronts, or sipped wine on cafe terraces.
Some yellow vests have joined traditional political parties. Benjamin Cauchy ran as a candidate for a French far-right party in the EU elections.
Yellow vests, he says, “go hiking every Saturday but they aren’t moving forward.”
Mr. Cauchy failed to win a seat in the European Parliament but he is gearing up for municipal elections next year. He left his job as an insurance salesman in southern France to become the party’s spokesman. He now spends most of his time in Paris.
Still, every week a small group of yellow vests continues to take to the streets demanding more direct democracy, among other things.
The atmosphere at the protests, however, has soured, says 21-year-old Stephen Broquin.
“The old tensions between the right and the left that people had forgotten when they joined the movement have resurfaced,” Mr. Broquin says.
Ms. Mouraud, who lighted the yellow-vest fuse with her viral video, takes a philosophical view: “There are only confetti left, but confetti can be hard to sweep off the streets.”
Write to Noemie Bisserbe at noemie.bisserbe@wsj.com