Salary, retirement… Do you know how much your neighbors earn?

Retirement, succession, purchasing power… Many questions are on the minds of French women and men as the second round of the presidential election approaches, which will be held on Sunday April 24, 2022. Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen will once again have the opportunity to cross swords, this time at the ballot box rather than on a television set. Both – as well as their former competitors, on which Planet also shone the spotlight before the first round – have multiplied the proposals relating to voter income.

Thus, the far-right candidate intends to put in place conditions conducive to salary increases when the outgoing president prefers to opt for bonuses, recalls BFMTV. Both have also considered a number of measures to increase “small pensions” for retirement; even though the term hides different realities on one side and the other of the political spectrum. Such measures have, quite mechanically, enough to snare and intrigue the barge. But to be fully aware of all the issues before going to vote, it is important to keep a few figures in mind.

In France, the median retiree receives 1,850 euros per month in 2018, according to the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics (Drees), whose data is taken over by MoneyVox. Very concretely, this does not mean that a majority of French men and women who have liquidated their rights receive as much… but that one in two retirees receives more. The rest don’t earn as much. It is a sum of transition which can be summarily interpreted as the passage from one social class to another.

For information, the average retirement pension was then 1,460 euros gross from the general scheme.

The average salary in France is quite high. In 2018, informs Le Journal du Net, it amounted to 27,721 euros annually, again according to information from the Department of Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics. This represented 2,424 euros monthly, in 2019… and therefore 3,183 euros gross.

Only, here it is: we must not lose sight of the difference between a median salary and an average salary. The average is based on a calculation grouping together all the remuneration but does not necessarily allow a very precise or very representative picture of the situation. This is the advantage of the median salary: it makes it possible to identify a value that cuts a population into two categories. With on one side those who receive less; on the other, those who touch more.

According to the simulator set up by the National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Insee), put forward by MoneyVox, the latter should be between 1,700 and 1,800 euros per month.

Did you know ? There is not only a poverty threshold in France: the Observatory of Inequalities has also established the existence of a “wealth threshold”, which covers around 8% of the French population. This still represents 5 million people in 2020, reports Europe 1.

The degree of wealth, within the framework of this report, was calculated on the basis of statistical data relating essentially to the level of remuneration of French men and women. A single person earning at least 3,740 euros per month after taxes, or about twice the median salary at the time, was then considered rich.