Informations Rapides · 6 October 2023 · n° 258

The all employees-revised index of hourly labour cost - (ICHTrev-TS) Hourly labour cost index - second quarter 2023

In the second quarter of 2023, the payroll paid by employers increased more than the number of hours paid, so that hourly wages rose in most sectors of activity. This increase was the result of the inflation being taken into account in wage negotiations and their gradual implementation at the start of the year, as well as the result of the automatic revaluation of the minimum wage by +2.22% in May (after +1.81% in January). The profile of wage growth is also marked by the Value Sharing Premium (PPV) for which payments fell again in the second quarter of 2023: €650 million were paid to employees in the non-farm business sector excluding household services, compared with €1.1 billion in the previous quarter and €3.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2022. This scheme, which replaced the special bonus for purchasing power, allows firms to pay, between July 2022 and December 2023, up to 3,000 euros of bonuses per calendar year and per employee (and even 6,000 euros in the case of a profit-sharing agreement), free of social security contributions and income tax.

In addition, the “1 young person, 1 solution” plan, launched at the end of July 2020, contributed to labour cost variations. As part of this plan, from January 2023, employers are eligible, under certain conditions, for aid of up to €6,000 to hire a young worker with a sandwich course contract.

The ICHTrev-TS is primarily intended for users who need indicators of labour costs to upgrade their contracts. Therefore, this index is not usually subject to any revision once it has been published (however one exception was made in January 2021). It is computed, every quarter, on the basis of data from the labour cost index then smoothed and made monthly (base 100 in December 2008) to ensure less volatility.

The index of employer contributions has been published since April 2010 (base 100 in December 2008). It differs from the ICHTrev-TS in two ways: the three monthly indices of a same quarter are identical and there is no forecast for the mechanical and electrical industries as far as the first month of the next quarter is concerned. This index of employer contributions measures the change in the variable “1 + rate of employer contributions” where the rate of employer contributions is the percentage of employer social contributions and taxes minus subsidies based on wages and employment, relative to gross salary (see methodological note in the “Documentation” tab on the webpage of this publication).