Salaries: ninth in the ranking, France displays the lowest increase in average wages in the EU in 2025

As in previous years, France still occupies ninth place in the European ranking of average annual salaries of the 26 countries (excluding the Netherlands) monitored by Eurostat, the statistical arm of the European Union. With 44,734 euros gross per year, or 3728 euros per month, France exceeds the European average of 41 by 3270 euros.

464 euros per year, or 3455 euros per month. France does better than average, without ever worrying the top of the class. The contrast is clear with the neighbors to the north and east with Belgium, fourth, which displays 5,165 euros per month on average and Germany, sixth with 4,697 euros, respectively 1,437 and 969 euros more than in France.

France still remains ahead of its southern neighbors with Spain, 11th with 2927 euros per month, and Italy, 13th with 2851 euros. The top 3, represented by the Luxembourg champion (7,134 euros per month, almost double the French level), Denmark (6,125 euros per month) and Ireland (5,366 euros per month) remains very far ahead. At the other end of the ranking, Bulgaria remains at the bottom at 1,350 euros per month, more than five times less than Luxembourg.

An increase among the lowest in the Union Between 2022 and 2025, the French average salary increased by 9.3%, compared to 16.2% for the European average. Only Sweden (+6.9%), Italy (+7.4%) and Finland, by just a bit, are doing worse. This pace slows down from year to year with +5% in 2023, +2.4% in 2024, then +1.8% in 2025, the lowest increase of the 26 countries that year.

At the same time, the European average increased by 6.2%, 5% then 4.3%. Thus, the French lead over the EU average is gradually decreasing, going from a gap of almost 15% in 2022 to 8% in 2025. While the gap with Germany widens from 6,834 to 11,626 euros in average annual salary.

And the East is catching up at high speed with a jump of 54% in Poland, 39.2% in Hungary, 38.2% in Romania over three years. However, these figures should be read with caution. This is, here, an average including only public and private employees, it is therefore driven upwards by very high salaries and does not take into account the self-employed and liberal professions.

These amounts also ignore inflation and therefore do not necessarily reflect a gain in purchasing power. However, prices increased by 8% in France between 2022 and 2025, according to INSEE, almost as much as the average salary over this same period. When compared with the rest of the EU, with Eurostat's harmonized price index designed to compare countries with each other, prices increased by 9.1% in France and 11.9% in the EU over the period.

Machine-translated from French