Informations Rapides · 7 April 2023 · n° 93

The all employees-revised index of hourly labour cost - (ICHTrev-TS) Hourly labour cost index - fourth quarter 2022

In the fourth quarter of 2022, the payroll increased significantly more than the number of hours paid by employers. The increase of wages is the result of the context of high inflation, which encouraged the wage negotiations but also and above all the massive payments of the Value Sharing Premium (PPV) at the end of the year. 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, various labour cost reduction measures are taken into account in the labour cost index and contribute to its variations until the fourth quarter of 2022.

On the one hand, the “1 young person, 1 solution” plan, launched at the end of July 2020, provides under certain conditions for a premium, up to €4,000, to employers hiring a young worker under 26 years of age. It also provides for an exceptional aid for hiring a young worker with a sandwich course contract, up to €8,000 if the worker is older than 18 years old and up to €5,000 otherwise.

On the other hand, the plan to support the tourism sector decided on May 2020 provides for exemptions from employers’ social security contributions and assistance with the payment of contributions for the firms with fewer than 250 employees in some sectors, especially concentrated in trade, accommodation and food services and administrative and support service activities. These measures have been gradually reduced as the health crisis came to an end; however, some employers still have the opportunity of charging to 2022 the remainder of the aid for the payment of contributions to which they were entitled in 2021 and from which they have not yet benefited fully.

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 a monthly index (base 100 in December 2008) that is published every quarter for all industries.

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).