France’s SMIC (salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance, the statutory minimum wage) has stood at €12.31 gross an hour since 1 June 2026, up 2.41% from €12.02. For a full-time employee on 35 hours a week, that is €1,867.02 gross a month, €43.99 more than before, and about €1,477.93 net, a gain of €34.82 in take-home pay, according to service-public.gouv.fr. Dares, the statistics department of the Ministry of Labour, counted 2.1 million private-sector, non-agricultural employees, 11.8% of the total, directly lifted by the previous increase in January.

The next number, the SMIC for 2027, is not known yet: it will be set by decree in December for 1 January 2027, and current price data point to a small automatic step. The sharper story sits on the cost side. Because the government froze the SMIC value used to calculate the RGDU (réduction générale dégressive unique, France’s sliding-scale relief on employer contributions) at its January level, a small employer lost €25.62 a month of relief per full-time minimum-wage worker from June. Add that to the €43.99 gross rise and the monthly bill reaches €69.61 before employer contributions on the rise itself; by wherewework’s calculation, the June step cost small employers close to twice the gross increase.

Whether that freeze is repeated, lifted or reshaped for 2027 is a discretionary government choice, and it will shape hiring at the minimum wage as much as the headline rate.

1. The SMIC today: €12.31 an hour, and who it applies to

The official figures, as published by service-public.gouv.fr on 1 June 2026, are €12.31 gross (€9.74 net) per hour, €1,867.02 gross (€1,477.93 net) per month and €22,404.20 gross (€17,735.19 net) per year for full-time work. These amounts apply to employees in mainland France, Guadeloupe, French Guiana, Martinique, Réunion, Saint-Barthélemy, Saint-Martin and Saint-Pierre-et-Miquelon. Mayotte has its own, lower SMIC, set at €9.33 an hour (€1,415.05 a month) from January 2026.

Treat the net figures as a reference, not a promise. Service-public.gouv.fr notes that the net SMIC you actually receive depends on your company and on certain contributions linked to its sector of activity, so your payslip is the real test.

Who earns it? Dares figures reported by MoneyVox show that 25.6% of part-time employees benefited from the January 2026 increase, against 8.8% of full-timers, and that women made up nearly 60% of beneficiaries. Firm size matters just as much: the share was 21.9% in businesses with 1 to 9 employees versus 9.5% in larger ones, falling from 25.4% in one-employee firms to 6.6% in firms of 500 or more.

Some sectors run largely on the minimum. The share of employees concerned reached 31.7% in mainly-food retail, 53.8% under the personal-services (companies) agreement and 62.3% in fast food, but stayed under 5% in ten groups of branches, including banking, finance and insurance, and metallurgy. Dares itself cautions that no statistical source measures SMIC earners precisely, only approximately. If you work in one of these sectors, check salaries in France for comparable jobs (crew member, retail assistant, home help) before assuming the minimum is simply the going rate.

2. How the SMIC got here: from €10.15 in 2020 to €12.31

The last six years were unusually busy. According to the SMIC expert group’s figures, sourced from Dares, the gross hourly SMIC was €10.15 in January 2020. Inflation then triggered a series of in-year rises: €10.48 in October 2021, €10.85 in May 2022, €11.07 in August 2022 and €11.52 in May 2023, on top of annual steps that took it to €11.27 in January 2023 and €11.65 in January 2024. On 1 November 2024 it rose 2% to €11.88, bringing forward the January 2025 revaluation, so the SMIC did not move at all during 2025.

In 2026 it rose twice: by 1.18% to €12.02 on 1 January, then by 2.41% to €12.31 on 1 June. Overall, the hourly rate is 21.3% higher than in January 2020 and 3.62% higher than throughout 2025, which means €65.22 more gross per month for a full-time worker.

The rules sit in France’s Code du travail (Labour Code), which covers employees working for employers in France. The SMIC is fixed every year from 1 January (article L3231-6), and its purchasing power must rise by at least half the gain in average hourly wages (article L3231-8). Between annual reviews, article L3231-5 adds an automatic trigger: when the price index used for the SMIC reaches a level at least 2% above the index recorded at the previous fixing, the SMIC rises in the same proportion from the first day of the following month. That index is not headline inflation but consumer prices excluding tobacco for the poorest 20% of households (article R*3231-2).

That trigger fired in spring. On 13 May, INSEE reported consumer prices up 2.2% year-on-year in April, driven by energy and particularly oil prices amid the conflict in the Middle East. The SMIC index stood at 102.40, about 2.5% above its November 2025 reference; rounding the new hourly rate to the cent brought the effective rise to 2.41%. The new amount was set by a ministerial order (arrêté) of 22 May 2026, as the Labour Code provides for in-year rises. Jean-Pierre Farandou, Minister of Labour and Solidarity, presented it as an important increase at a difficult economic moment for many households.

There was no coup de pouce, the discretionary boost the government can grant at any time. According to AFP, the last one dates back to July 2012. The independent SMIC expert group, chaired by Stéphane Carcillo, had argued against going further in its November 2025 report:

“Given the slowdown in the labour market, the persistent compression of wages, and the relatively high level of the Smic compared to the median wage, the Expert Group recommends not going beyond the increase provided for by the automatic revaluation.”

Unions saw it differently. The CGT told AFP the rise was simply about maintaining living standards for minimum-wage workers, not a gain, while CFDT leader Marylise Léon called for wage negotiations to be reopened. Fatima, a 25-year-old paid the SMIC at a crêpe counter in the Paris metro, told AFP that around thirty-five euros was not enough given today’s cost of living.

3. From gross to net to employer cost

For a full-time worker on 35 hours a week, the June step looks like this:

• Before 1 June 2026: €1,823.03 gross, about €1,443.11 net per month.
• From 1 June 2026: €1,867.02 gross, about €1,477.93 net per month (+€43.99 gross, +€34.82 net).
• Net-to-gross ratio: about 79.16% on the official June figures.

On the employer side, the key variable is the RGDU, which replaced the former Fillon reduction on 1 January 2026. According to specialist payroll guides, its coefficient peaks at the SMIC at 39.81% of gross pay for employers with fewer than 50 staff (40.21% for larger ones), slides down as pay rises, stays at a 2% floor and disappears at three times the SMIC. The reference SMIC in the formula is annual: €21,876.40 for 2026, or €12.02 × 1,820 hours.

On 22 May, the minister for public action and accounts, David Amiel, announced that the June rise would not be passed through to that parameter, and the Bulletin officiel de la sécurité sociale (BOSS, the official social security bulletin) later confirmed €12.02 for the whole of 2026. In a simplified monthly view for a firm with fewer than 50 employees, wherewework calculates:

• January to May: 39.81% × €1,823.03 = €725.75 of relief per month.
• From June, parameter frozen: the coefficient falls to 37.50%, so relief drops to €700.13, a loss of €25.62.
• Had the parameter followed the SMIC: relief would have reached €743.26, €17.51 more than in January.

So the monthly employer cost of a full-time SMIC employee is now €1,867.02 gross, plus employer contributions (some of which, such as the workplace-accident rate, vary by firm), minus €700.13 of relief. The June change alone added €43.99 of gross pay, €25.62 of lost relief and employer contributions on the €43.99. The real calculation runs on cumulative annual pay, so individual payslips smooth these amounts, but the direction is the same.

For employees, the practical point is that the relief shrinks as pay climbs above the reference SMIC, which makes raises just above the minimum relatively expensive for employers. That is why it pays to see how your salary compares with what others in the same role earn, rather than measuring yourself against the SMIC alone.

4. Employer relief in 2027: two scenarios to budget for

The 1 January 2027 revaluation is statutory; the RGDU parameter that goes with it is a government decision. To show what is at stake, take wherewework’s illustrative 2027 SMIC of €12.41 an hour (€1,882.18 gross a month, explained in section 5) and assume the 2026 formula parameters stay unchanged:

• Scenario A, parameter reset to the January 2027 SMIC: the coefficient returns to 39.81% and relief reaches €749.30 a month, €49.16 more than today, more than covering the €15.16 gross rise.
• Scenario B, parameter frozen again at €12.02: the coefficient falls to 36.75% and relief drops to €691.70, €8.43 less than today, so the employer pays €23.59 more per month before contributions on the rise.

Neither outcome is settled. The PLFSS 2027 (projet de loi de financement de la sécurité sociale, the social security financing bill) has reopened the debate on employer charge relief. Discussing its article 7 in the National Assembly’s social affairs committee, Justine Gruet, an MP for the Droite républicaine group, said her group did not find it acceptable to increase labour costs for businesses. Because the bill can also change the formula itself, read these scenarios as a range, not a forecast.

Branch pay scales add a second pressure. Every employer must pay at least the SMIC, whatever its sector’s collective agreement says, but wage grids that fall behind it compress pay. After the June rise, 126 of the 179 monitored branches had minimums below the SMIC, and a new penalty for branches whose scales sit below it is being prepared by decree, according to specialist payroll press. Dares put the share of employees in firms applying a branch minimum below the SMIC at 2.5% on the eve of January 2026, down from 2.8% in October 2024. The expert group notes that France leaves only about two weeks between a SMIC decision and its entry into force, which it links to temporary non-compliance in some sectors.

If you are weighing an offer in a low-wage sector, use the job interview to ask which collective agreement applies and whether its pay grid for your grade has caught up with the June SMIC.

5. What the January 2027 SMIC could look like

No second automatic rise had been triggered by 26 October 2026. INSEE’s September data show headline inflation at 3.1% year-on-year, but the SMIC index stood at 103.22, only 0.80% above its April reference of 102.40. The trigger level is 104.45. Only if the definitive October index, due on 13 November 2026, reached that level (a monthly jump of about 1.2%) would the SMIC rise again on 1 December; otherwise the next change is the annual revaluation on 1 January 2027.

As a purely illustrative calculation, not a forecast: if January reflected only the price rise measured so far, with no wage component and no coup de pouce, the hourly SMIC would be €12.41, or €1,882.18 gross a month (€15.16 more than now) and about €1,489.93 net. Selectra’s own estimates, which it calls house calculations, put the January gain at between about €3.03 and €19.72 gross per month, with an hourly SMIC of €12.44 if prices stayed at their August level. It expects the wage rule to add little or nothing, since basic hourly wages for blue- and white-collar workers rose 2.1% year-on-year in the second quarter, while prices for modest households rose 1.9% (June to June) and already 2.8% (August to August).

That leaves the political lever. A coup de pouce remains possible at any time, but none has been granted since July 2012, and last year the expert group recommended both sticking to the automatic revaluation and reforming indexation to allow more flexibility. The CFDT, for its part, said after last December’s consultation that it is unacceptable for employees to stay on the SMIC for the long term.

Conclusion: the dates that will set 2027 pay and costs

The calendar is predictable. INSEE publishes provisional October prices on 30 October and the definitive index on 13 November 2026. The SMIC expert group usually reports at the end of November, unions and employers are consulted in mid-December, and last year’s decree appeared in the Journal officiel (official gazette) on 18 December. The new rate then applies on 1 January 2027.

For small employers, the number to watch is not only the new SMIC but the RGDU parameter that comes with it: on today’s illustration, the gap between a reset and a second freeze is worth more than €57 a month in relief per full-time minimum-wage employee. For workers, the January step looks small unless prices jump or the government breaks with more than a decade of practice. Once the decree is out, start from your gross salary and run it through a salary calculator to see what the change means for your net salary.

If you have been on the minimum for a while and the 2027 rise looks thin, now is a good moment to update your CV and look at open jobs in sectors where pay grids sit comfortably above the SMIC.