“I no longer go to the cinema or to the hairdresser”: living on the minimum wage, a daily life under constraints

This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the report above. Click on the video to watch it in full. Dreux (Eure-et-Loir), just over 30,000 inhabitants.

Among them, employees on minimum wage, sometimes for a lifetime. How to get by, find accommodation, have leisure activities with minimum income? France Télévisions asked the question In the eyes of the French.

In the middle of the school holidays, bowling afternoon for Stéphanie Roeux and her family. A part-time secretary in a high school, she is paid the minimum wage, 9.74 euros per hour. For your vacation, no travel, but this low-budget outing, 5 euros per person.

"It's occasional. This is very rare, so it's for the school holidays and to please my son. We did it this summer, so we can't go on vacation every school vacation.

It's not possible," she explains. Constrained leisure activities, but above all how to fill your fuel tank or your shopping trolley with less than 1,500 euros net per month. In a supermarket parking lot, two carers, Nathalie and Solange.

Not the same seniority and yet almost the same salary. A few cents more than the minimum wage. They don't feel like they're being paid what they're worth.

"Absolutely not. For 22 years of seniority, no. Compared to, for example, Madam, who has just arrived, we are almost on the same salary", confides the oldest.

They don't have enough to live on. “I need 1,000 euros more,” says the new arrival. “Me, I'm not that greedy: 500”, nuance his colleague.

"I don't go to the cinema anymore. I don't go to the hairdresser anymore either because if I go to the hairdresser, I get 50 euros, that's 50 euros less shopping. It's becoming complicated to go shopping with the current minimum wage," adds the other woman.

An insufficient increase in the minimum wage In France, more than 2 million employees receive the minimum wage. Like Isabelle Feneu, and that’s not enough for her. She has to take a second job in addition to her minimum wage as a bakery saleswoman.

The minimum wage was increased by 3.6% this year, but still insufficient to meet the needs of one's family. “At the end of the month, on a salary, it's maybe 30 euros more, but we don't see it. It's frustrating, because we say to ourselves, this is time that we could spend with our children,” she regrets.

In the company, almost all of the 1,100 employees are on minimum wage. The boss assures that he does not have the means to increase them all. The solution, according to him, is to reduce charges on the lowest paid.

"The summary of all these charges still comes to 431 euros, which they do not touch, of course. If we only earned a quarter of the salary costs, on a full-time basis, that's more than 100 euros more in the person's pocket, and that, right away", assures Xavier Audebrand, president of "L'interview". Small pensioners also feel wronged A life of working.

Machine-translated from French