Before getting started, let us clarify the difference between your salary and remuneration. The salary is only a part of one’s remuneration. The other part is composed of benefits, bonuses, stock options, and other mechanisms that a company uses to reward your work. For most positions (that is, for non-senior leadership positions), most of the negotiation is based on the salary, but some positions, like sales, can have significant bonuses that will add to the total remuneration.
In this article, we’ll give you a few examples of what one can expect as a salary in France. Then, we’ll explain how to calculate your take-home pay and, finally, talk about other forms of remuneration and benefits.
Net, gross and super-gross salary
There are basically three ways to express a salary in France: the
super-gross (called
salaire super brut or
salaire chargé in French),
gross (
salaire brut, in French) and
net salary (
salaire net). Here, we explain the difference between each and how to calculate your take-home pay at the end of the month.
Super-gross salary
The super-gross salary is your actual cost to the company. In France, both the employee and the employer pay social contributions. The employee’s share (
Cotisations salariales, in French) is deducted from his gross salary, while the employer’s contribution is added to the gross salary to make the super-gross.
The employer has to pay about 36% of your gross salary’s value as his social contribution. That means that if you earn a gross salary of 2,500 €, your employer will actually pay 3,400 €.
Gross salary
The gross salary is your actual salary in the eyes of the law. It’s the remuneration for your work before deduction of your mandatory social contribution (basically, your contribution to the welfare system which includes retirement, health, unemployment, etc.) and mutual insurance service (
Mutuelle, in French).
Your company may apply discounts to your gross salary to account for co-financed benefits. The most common example is food vouchers (
Tickets Restaurant in French). The employee generally pays a co-participation of 40 to 50%, which is directly deducted from their gross salary. Read more on this benefit below.
Net salary
This is your take-home pay. It is basically the amount you will receive in your bank account after the deduction of your income tax. The income tax is based on your net salary. Since 2019, income tax is deducted directly from your salary.
Calculate your take-home pay
Although the above information is important, you still don’t know how much you will receive in your bank account at the end of the month, right? So let’s get practical! The calculation of the exact amount you will receive can quickly become overwhelming. Instead of using sophisticated calculations, here is a simple calculator that will estimate your disposable income.
Bear in mind that the exact amount may vary according to the industry or the company you work in and your contract type. This calculator only provides an estimate of your salary.
Fixed and variable income
It’s common for
cadres positions to have a variable component to their salary, in France. Depending on your arrangement, it can represent anywhere between 5 and 20% and can be given as a monthly and/or yearly bonus.
Positions with a strong impact on a company’s results, like sales and management, tend to have a higher variable share (for senior leadership, a 50% bonus is common practice). The criteria for unlocking the bonus can be diverse: it can be based on personal and/or collective goals. These parameters are important as they will also give you good hints about the company’s strategy and culture (competitive vs. collaborative).
Other forms of remuneration
In addition to a monthly salary, companies usually offer other forms of compensation to their employees, here are the most common benefits.
Tickets Restaurant: also known as
tickets restau, these are restaurant vouchers that companies have to provide to their employees if they don’t have a lunch room. The employer generally pays for 50% of the voucher’s value; the other 50% is deducted from the employee’s paycheck. These vouchers used to be made of paper, but nowadays most companies use digital ones.
Company car: this is the most common type of benefit for sales and technical functions. Make sure your company offers a véhicule de fonction and not a véhicule de service. The difference may seem subtle, but you can only use a véhicule de service for work trips. On the other hand, you can use your véhicule de fonction on weekends and vacations. But don’t get too excited, there are limits to the private use of a véhicule de fonction in most companies (maximum distance per year, for example).
Participation in the company’s results and company savings plan: those two types of benefits (participation and savings) usually come hand in hand and are very well framed in the French labour laws. For more information about these benefits, have a look at our dedicated article here.
Stock options: this type of remuneration remains rare in France. It is most common for leadership positions in listed companies and startups in their early stages of life.
Minimum wage in France
In France, we call it SMIC (
salaire minimum de croissance). It is the minimum amount employees can receive per work hour in France. Its value in 2021 was 10.48 € per hour and it’s updated every year by the government. Contrary to the examples above, it’s expressed as an hourly gross value because it’s often used for part-time work. Besides, as the work shift per employee varies from one industry to another, it makes it universal. On the table below, we show the equivalence between the hourly, monthly and yearly SMIC for a 35 hour work week.
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