After a drop in 2022 and then in 2023, the purchasing power of private sector employees increased again last year (+0.8%), according to INSEE. A reactivation that is mainly due to the sharp decline in inflation, which stood at 2% in 2024, while it was around 5% during the previous two years marked by the outbreak of the war in Ukraine and the energy crisis.
At the same time, the average net salary in full-time equivalent increased by 2.8% to €2,733 last year, a faster increase than prices. However, note that this purchasing power gain is not enough to offset losses in 2022 (-1.3%) and 2023 (-1%). According to INSEE, this “barely” allows employees to recover their level of purchasing power from 2019. In an economic note published in September, the statistics institute also stated that employees will have recovered “only” “three quarters of the ground lost in 2022 and 2023” by the end of 2025. Even more relevant, the average salary was almost 20% lower than the average salary in 2024: in fact, half of the Salaried workers received less than 2,190 net per month last year.
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1% of employees earn more than 7 minimum wages
In detail, one in ten employees earned less than 1,492 euros per month last year (interns and apprentices are included in the statistics), while the best paid 10% earned more than 4,334 euros. Please also note that one employee in 100 received more than 10,261 euros, or more than 7 times the minimum wage. Pay inequalities remain stable despite everything: the salary of the lowest paid 10% has increased by 0.9% on average, compared to +0.7% of the best paid 10% after taking into account inflation.
Not in vain, it is in the sectors that employ more executives where salaries are higher, such as financial services (4,123 euros on average) or information and communications (3,853 euros). In comparison, the average salary was 1,979 euros in the accommodation and restaurant sector, where there are proportionally more employees. Workers (+1.1%) and employees (+0.4%), on the other hand, saw their salaries increase more than managers (+0.1%) and intermediate professions (-0.1%) last year.
The decrease in salary inequalities between men and women continues
Despite an increase in their average salary in constant euros (+1%) greater than that of men (+0.7%), women still earned 13% less on average than their male counterparts for identical working hours last year (2,514 euros on average compared to 2,891 euros). However, this is a slight improvement, as the pay gap between women and men has narrowed by 0.3 points compared to 2023. This represents a decrease of 5.1 points over the last ten years.
Therefore, women are underrepresented among the highest-paid employees. Among the top 1%, 24.2% are women, while they represent 42% of all private sector employees. “By excluding the 1% of the highest-paid employees from the calculation, the net wage gap between women and men is reduced from 13.0% to 9.3%,” highlights the statistics institute.
Source: BFM TV
