Informations Rapides · 15 May 2025 · n° 117

In Q1 2025, hourly wages increased by 2.3% over a year, hourly costs by 2.4% Labour cost index (LCI) – Flash estimate - first quarter 2025

In the first quarter of 2025, hourly wages in the non-agricultural market sector (excluding services to households) slightly slowed: +2.3% over a year, after +2.4% in the previous quarter. This slowdown was part of a trend that has been observed since mid-2023, as wage negotiations took account of falling inflation: on average in the first quarter of 2025, the consumer price index increased by 0.9% over a year, after +2.0% on annual average in 2024 and +4.9% in 2023. However, the payments of the Value Sharing Premium (“PPV”) were almost stable: €520million had been paid to employees in the first quarter of 2025, compared with €500million a year earlier. Quarter-on-quarter, hourly wages were almost stable (+0.1%), after a rise of 0.7% at the end of 2024.

In the first quarter of 2025, hourly wages slowed in industry (+2.5% over a year, after +3.2%) and in construction (+2.0%, after +2.9%), a sector in which PPV payments had been massive at the end of 2024 and then fellat the beginning of 2025. This was the main factor behind the quarterly decrease in hourly wages in these two sectors (seasonally and trading day adjusted data). In services, however, wages slightly accelerated (+2.2% over a year, after +2.0%): they had been slowed at the end of 2024 by a decline in the PPV payments.

The hourly labour costs (wages and salaries, contributions, taxes net of subsidies) in the non-agricultural market sector (excluding services to households) also continued to slow in the first quarter of 2025, in line with wages: +2.4% over a year, after +2.7% in the previous quarter. The rise in labour costs over a year remained slightly stronger than the rise in wages: this primarily reflected the decline in the amounts of exemptions of employers’ contributions, which had sharply increased between the end of 2021 and the end of 2023, and to a lesser extent the legislative changes introduced at the start of 2025 (particularly the reduction in the amounts of apprenticeship aid).