The minimum wage will increase by 2.65% on May 1. It is the Ministry of Labor which announces it this Friday. For a full-time job, the monthly minimum wage will be 1645.58 euros gross. Net, it will go from 1269 to 1302.64 euros. The gross hourly minimum wage will drop from 10.57 to 10.85 euros.
This decision has nothing to do with the presidential election, it is an automatic increase, due to the general increase in prices. In January, the Smic had increased by 0.9% after an exceptional increase of 2.2% in October, already due to inflation. In France, the purchasing power of minimum wage workers is protected by an automatic revaluation mechanism enshrined in law, which ensures that the minimum wage increases at least as fast as inflation affecting households with the lowest incomes.
Inflation reached 4.5% over one year in March, a level not seen since the 1980s, according to INSEE, which confirmed its first estimate published at the end of March on Friday. After 3.6% in February, the rise in the consumer price index stood at 4.5% in March. According to the final results of the National Institute of Statistics, inflation excluding tobacco between November 2021 and March 2022 stands at 2.65% for the 20% of households with the lowest incomes.
As in recent months, this new acceleration in inflation is explained by the rise in energy prices, which rose again by 29.2% in March, after +21.1% in February. They are notably driven by petroleum products (+43.5%), a consequence of market tensions since the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
The increase in food prices also increased, with an increase of 2.9%, after 2.1% in February. Fresh products in particular experienced an increase of 7.6% over one year.
Conversely, the prices of manufactured products slowed down a little (+2.1%, after +2.2% in February).