How much does a minimum wage worker earn once retired? As a reminder, the minimum interprofessional growth wage (Smic) is the lowest income that work can theoretically offer, in France. Unsurprisingly, it is not very high: its net monthly amount – recently increased, as the Journal du Net recalls on its site – barely amounts to 1,231 euros. It does not allow you to receive much more, once the time of retirement has come.
But how does it happen when you receive slightly more than the minimum wage on a daily basis? Will a worker whose net monthly income rises to 1,500 euros be entitled to a significantly higher retirement pension? To find out, Planet offers you to make some estimates. Above all, it involves remembering the real scope of the exercise: any overall assessment can only be approximate and is not intended to clearly represent a specific personal situation. It is much more a question of giving an order of magnitude.
Receiving a net monthly salary of 1,500 euros, when you are not a manager, means receiving around 1,923 euros in gross monthly salary. For a manager, this amount rises to 2,000 euros. By way of comparison, the monthly gross minimum wage amounts to 1,554.58 euros. Over the year, a non-executive paid 1,500 euros therefore receives 23,077 euros gross. The frame, he receives a little more: 24,000 euros.
Therefore, it is possible to calculate the possible amount of their retirement pension using a simulator. In this case, Planet has opted for that of the specialized site Retirement in plain English and offers two standard profiles, practically identical with the exception of the differences already mentioned. The two workers were born on January 1, 1960, started working at 18 and never had children. They both retire at 62 years and 11 months in 2022.
The framework should receive approximately 1,477 euros per month once retired. The non-executive will receive approximately 1,239 euros.
Between November 2021 and March 2022, the reference consumer price index for low-income households increased by 2.65%. While the law requires automatic revaluation according to inflation, the amount of the minimum wage has been aligned with this increase, also gaining 2.65% on May 1, 2022. Now, the gross hourly minimum wage reaches the sum of 10, 85 euros, an increase of 28 cents compared to its starting amount which reached 10.57 euros. Over a full year, from May 2021 to May 2022, the minimum wage therefore increased by 5.9%, the equivalent of 91 euros gross.
This increase in the Smic logically leads to an impact on the ceiling of resources not to be exceeded in order to collect the contributory minimum, a device which makes it possible to increase one’s retirement pension. Granted to an insured person who has reached the full rate, the contributory minimum has followed the increase in the minimum wage, also being revalued by 2.65%. Since May 1, its gross amount has thus increased from 1,240.89 euros to 1,273.76 euros per month.
