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Wages and SMIC (minimum wage), Bruno Retailleau

Reductions in social contributions on low wages: €30bn less in contributions a year, half employees, half businesses

Direction of change: increase, compared with current law.

The lever. Reductions in employer social contributions on wages close to the SMIC (minimum wage): maintained, refocused, reduced or abolished. Direction rule: ↑ larger reductions (lower contributions on wages).

« Baisser les cotisations de 30 milliards d'euros par an. La moitié revient directement aux salariés, soit environ 500 euros nets par an au salaire médian, sans qu'ils aient rien à changer à leur organisation. L'autre moitié revient aux entreprises, en baisse durable du coût du travail dès la première heure travaillée, pour restaurer leur compétitivité. »1

Translation by the editorsCut contributions by 30 billion euros a year. Half goes directly to employees, i.e. around 500 euros net a year at the median wage, without them having to change anything in their arrangements. The other half goes to businesses, as a lasting reduction in labour costs from the first hour worked, to restore their competitiveness.

Encoding

ParameterCurrent lawProgrammeEffective date or horizon
Uniform net gain per private-sector employee, through lower contributions (same amount for each)0 €/mois par salarié41.67 €/mois par salarié (assumption by the editors, see the costing)Full year, €bn per year; positive sign = gain for public finances unless marked « coût » [“cost”]. Net wage increase parameters: 2024 euros (wage bill) and j…

Costing

Announced by the candidate

−€30bn

per year, cost to the public accounts. Decrease of €30bn a year, which the candidate says is funded by the unemployment insurance reform (€12.5bn to €15.7bn), the single social account and the fight against fraud (€10bn), the « mécanique » [“mechanical”] increase in corporate income tax revenue (€4bn) and the activity incentive income (€2bn): « Au total, entre 28,5 et 31,7 milliards d'euros par an. » [“In total, between 28.5 and 31.7 billion euros a year.”]

Published costings

none

No external costing of this position recorded to date.

Our calculation

−€10bn

per year for the public accounts, revenue cut.

The calculation

  • Uniform net gain per private-sector employee, through lower contributions (same amount for each): (41.67 − 0) ÷ 1 = 41.67 times “+€1 net per month for each of the 20.96 million private-sector salaried jobs (Insee, second quarter of 2026): 12 × 20.957 million, i.e. €0.2515bn per year (€25.15bn for €100 per month)”, each a cost of €0.25bn (0.25 to 0.25).

Assumption by the editors. Partial costing. Employee half: per-person rule, +€500 net a year for each employee (measure « Rendre 500 euros par an à tous les salariés » [“Give back 500 euros a year to all employees”], « environ 500 euros nets par an au salaire médian » [“about 500 euros net a year at the median wage”]), read as the same amount for all, i.e. €41.67 a month; base: 20.96 million private-sector salaried jobs (Insee, second quarter of 2026), about €10.5bn, against €15bn announced for this half. Other reading, a gain proportional to pay (€500 at the median net wage of €26,280 a year, i.e. 1.9% of each person's net pay): 1.9% × €551bn of private-sector net payroll, also about €10.5bn. Business half, not counted (partial costing): €15bn less in employer contributions « dès la première heure travaillée » [“from the first hour worked”], with no rate or schedule: pure amount with no named instrument, not costed (decision of 18 October 2026, common rule, like the production tax cuts announced as an amount); it was taken until now at €15bn. Same base and same method as the net pay increases of Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, Gabriel Attal and David Lisnard; calculation excluding civil servants: public employees are not counted (about €3bn more if they were, 6.06 million public jobs). Gross cost, before the announced funding (unemployment insurance, single social account and fraud, corporate income tax, incentive income), which is not deducted.

Coefficient calculated by the editors from Groupe d'experts SMIC, Rapport 2025 (25 novembre 2025): the position is marked as an assumption by the editors.

Figure announced by the candidate: no gap calculated: costing based on an assumption by the editors.

Current law, sources and limits of the cost schedule

Current law. Since 1 January 2026, the single tapered general reduction (RGDU, decree of 4 September 2025) merges the general reduction and the health and family contribution reductions (bandeaux maladie et famille), with an exit point at 3 times the SMIC. Cost of the general reductions: €75.4bn in 2024, €72.4bn forecast for 2025, €72.3bn in 2026 (Commission des comptes de la Sécurité sociale (Social Security Accounts Committee), October 2025).

Horizon. Full year, €bn per year; positive sign = gain for public finances unless marked « coût » [“cost”]. Net wage increase parameters: 2024 euros (wage bill) and jobs in the second quarter of 2026.

Limits. The Expert Group's scenarios at 2 and 2.5 SMIC (exit at 2 SMIC: about −€6bn; Bozio-Wasmer: +€1.5bn) are costed « une fois les effets emploi pris en compte » [“once employment effects are taken into account”]: these are dynamic costings, cited here as benchmarks and removed from the options of the static cost schedule. Total abolition: 1.3 to 1.9 million jobs destroyed according to the Expert Group. Budget amendments also cite « près de 80 Md€ » [“nearly €80bn”] for all exemptions, a broader scope. Total abolition net of job losses (€40bn to €50bn) is a dynamic costing: it is not an option of the static cost schedule. A cut in contributions announced in euros per year is costed through the parameter in €bn per year: €1 less in contributions = €1 less in revenue, static, before any financing announced elsewhere. The additional income tax resulting from a rise in net wages is not counted. Before 2026, the general reduction (up to 1.6 SMIC) cost €39.4bn and the reduced health and family rates, which went beyond 1.6 SMIC, €36bn (2024, PLFSS 2026, annex 4). Since 2026, the single reduction runs up to 3 SMIC: no source read costs the share paid above 1.6 SMIC under the RGDU. Under the 2024 regime, chart I.24 of the SMIC Expert Group (2025 report) allows it to be estimated at about €15.8bn (reduced health rates €10.8bn and family rates €5.0bn paid above 1.6 SMIC, sum of the labels read by the editors). Option « suppression au-delà de 1,6 SMIC » [“abolition above 1.6 SMIC”] (editors' calculation): €15.8bn as upper bound (2024 regime); €12.7bn as lower bound, if the entire decrease in the cost of the reductions between 2024 and 2026 (€75.4bn → €72.3bn) fell on wages above 1.6 SMIC; midpoint as central value. Parameter in €bn: one euro less in contributions is one euro less in revenue; the additional corporate income tax that mechanically results is not counted (static). Net wage increases defined per employee (rule on public bases, 18 October 2026): same method for all, cost = per-person rule × public base, static, without the additional income tax. Private-sector gross wage bill paid up to 3 SMIC (2024, editors' calculation): €500bn based on the reduced family rate (1.8 points, €9.0bn paid between 1 and 3 SMIC, chart I.24), €494bn combining the reduced health rate (6 points, €26.3bn up to 2.5 SMIC, i.e. €438bn) and the family rate between 2.5 and 3 SMIC (€1.0bn, i.e. €56bn); net wage bill = gross wage bill × net/gross ratio, from 0.7588 (private-sector average, Insee 2024) to 0.7916 (employee deductions of 20.84% for a non-managerial employee up to the ceiling, Urssaf 2026): €374bn to €396bn, 385 as central value. Net wage bill of all private-sector employees: €726bn (Urssaf, 2024) × 0.7588 = €551bn. Uniform gain per employee: 20,957 thousand private-sector salaried jobs (Insee, second quarter of 2026; jobs, not people, including agriculture, temporary work and private household employers). Public employees are not counted (reading « salariés » [“employees”] as private-sector employees, general scheme contributions): if they were, about €2.0bn more per point of net wage (€244.6bn of gross salaries in 2024 × 0.81) or €7.3bn more per €100 per month (6.06 million public jobs).

How to read these amounts. These are static costs and revenues, with no feedback effect, over a full year: nothing on growth, employment or the revenue that economic activity would gain or lose. A higher net cost does not on its own make a worse policy, nor net savings a better one: each programme rests on an economic model (demand-led stimulus, lower compulsory levies, consolidation of the public accounts…) that the cost schedule does not settle. GDP itself measures a volume of activity, not well-being or the usefulness of what is produced. Economic models and feedback effects.

This lever in the method · Costing for Bruno Retailleau

  1. Projet Retailleau, mesure n°24 « Rendre 500 euros par an à tous les salariés ». Read the programme page.

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