Who are the “low wages” in France? While, for a year, inflation has revived the problem of purchasing power, INSEE, in a study published on Tuesday September 20, returns to this category of workers, which represented 8% of employees in the private sector in 2019 in Metropolitan France. These are the most recent data, the time needed to analyze the huge amount of data contained in the nominative social declarations (DSN) sent by companies to the administration.
Low wages, this somewhat vague mass evoked in public discourse, are in fact a category clearly defined by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development: they are those whose work pays them less than two-thirds of the median salary ( as many French people earn more, as many earn less). They receive a little more than the minimum wage – in 2019, 1,310 euros net in full-time equivalent, for a minimum wage of 1,204 euros net.
Among these 8% of low wages, one in four is under 26, while young people represent only one in ten private sector employees. This is explained, details INSEE, by a logically shorter professional experience, but also because those who arrive young on the labor market are often less qualified.
Only “a small majority made it out”
Women are also overrepresented. Thus, more than half of low-wage earners are women workers (54%), whereas they represent only 42% of all private sector employees. The service sector, where they are more numerous, concentrates 83% of low-wage employees.
Among the professions most affected are cleaning, home help, low-skilled industrial workers (sorting, packaging, shipping, etc.), self-service employees and storekeepers. Thus, in about twenty occupations, more than one in four workers is on low pay. This is also more often the case when you are on a short or part-time contract, and when you are in subsidized employment.
Finally, INSEE questioned the trajectory of these workers between 2015 and 2019, and notes that at the end of this period, only “a small majority got away with it” : 55% have a better paid job. A quarter are still on low wages, even if some have been able to get out of it temporarily, and 18% are inactive, unemployed or self-employed. However, the situation is more unfavorable for employees in the aforementioned professions: 41% still receive a low salary, and have remained in this situation without interruption.