Purchasing power: Smic, reductions in charges, branch scales, the executive at the bottom of the salary wall

All trade union organizations are calling for a day of strike and demonstrations in the public and private sectors this Thursday, November 5 to demand immediate salary increases. This mobilization is based on the observation of stagnation in real incomes: at the end of the second quarter of 2026, the basic monthly salary in the private sector increased by 2.0% over one year, for inflation excluding tobacco standing at 1.7%, i.e. an effective gain limited to 0.2% in constant euros.

The decline also affects the top of the salary scales. The median gross remuneration of executives in the private sector fell by 1.8% over twelve months to stand at 54,000 euros annually in June 2026, according to Apec. Only 46% of executives obtained an individual increase this year, compared to 53% in 2025, while 48% received a variable part, compared to 54% in 2024

To unblock the situation without increasing the public deficit, the government is studying a targeted increase in the minimum wage. The executive put forward the hypothesis of an increase of 15 euros gross per month, an option rejected by the CFDT, which calls for an increase of 100 euros net, and by Force Ouvrière, which demands the immediate opening of compulsory negotiations.

Direct intervention on the legal scale, however, carries a risk of crushing the bottom of the scales: on January 1, 2026, 2.1 million employees in the non-agricultural private sector, or 11.8% of the workforce, benefited directly from the automatic increase in the minimum wage. According to Dares, 14.5% of employees in companies with 10 or more people receive a basic salary of less than 1.05 SMIC. Raising the legal floor without adjusting the branch minimums would therefore compress the hierarchy of remuneration at the level of the minimum wage.

In order to loosen this constraint on average salaries, the Ministry of the Economy is also considering a review of the profile of reductions in employer social contributions. The current degression of Fillon exemptions above 1.2 SMIC increases the marginal cost of an increase for the employer, creating a threshold effect which slows down individual increases. Smoothing the scale between 1.2 and 1.6 SMIC would reduce the gap between the net salary received by the employee and the gross cost paid by the company, but would deprive the Social Security funds of part of their revenue if the measure is not compensated budgetarily.

The executive finally has direct regulatory leverage over collective bargaining. Article L. 2241-10 of the Labor Code requires branches whose minimums are exceeded by the minimum wage to reopen discussions within 45 days of the legal increase. By convening the joint committees of lagging sectors, the government intends to force the revision of the conventional scales, particularly in business services (which bring together 33% of minimum wage employees) and personal services (32%). The government's final decisions on the minimum wage and the timetable for negotiation obligations must be incorporated by amendment during the examination of the finance bill in Parliament.

Machine-translated from French