The Minimum Wage (SMIC)

The minimum wage sets a floor below which no one can legally work. The intention is good. But there's a problem: if an employer judges that a candidate isn't worth the minimum wage, they simply don't hire them. This isn't a theory — it's arithmetic.

A study covering 64 pieces of research (Neumark & Wascher, 2014) finds that a 10% minimum wage rise destroys between 1% and 3% of jobs held by low-skilled workers. In France, 3.1 million people earn the minimum wage — meaning between 31,000 and 93,000 jobs lost. These aren't abstract figures: they're people having the door shut on them.

The minimum wage creates a two-speed labour market. Those who already have a job benefit from automatic rises — their pay goes up. Those looking for work face a threshold their potential employer is unwilling to cross. The minimum wage protects them in theory, and excludes them in practice.

For an employer, the minimum wage sets a fixed cost per job — regardless of what the role actually produces. If a candidate's productivity doesn't justify that cost, the employer faces two options: don't hire, or automate the role. This mechanism explains the French paradox: wage gaps between employees stay contained, but youth unemployment among the low-skilled is among the worst in Europe. The minimum wage reduces inequality among those who work — and widens it between those who are hired and those who no longer are.

Switzerland, Sweden and Denmark have no national minimum wage set by law. Yet their low-skilled workers earn some of Europe's highest wages. Their secret: branch-by-branch agreements negotiated between unions and employers, setting a floor adapted to each sector. A cook and a factory worker don't face the same constraints — and that's precisely what works.

Youth unemployment in France averages ~17% annually, with peaks above 20% (Eurostat 2023) — versus 5.8% in Germany and 8.1% in Switzerland. Germany only introduced a statutory minimum wage in 2015, and at a much lower level relative to the median wage. The correlation isn't a coincidence — it's a signal.

In the United States and United Kingdom, rather than a very high minimum wage, the state directly tops up wages for low-income workers: employers pay what the role is worth, and the gap is funded by taxation. The US Earned Income Tax Credit covers 23 million families; the UK's Working Tax Credit helped push the employment rate among low-skilled workers to 69% — compared with 53% in France. In France, the prime d'activité has worked on this principle since 2016. It covers 4.5 million households, but remains undersized relative to the minimum wage level.

The logic is simple: if your productivity is too low to justify the minimum wage, the minimum wage shuts you out. But if an employer can hire you at a wage matching your actual productivity, and the state tops up your income to a decent level — you work, you gain experience, you progress. The wage supplement doesn't abolish protection: it changes who pays for it. Instead of placing the entire burden on the employer who might have hired you, it spreads it across society as a whole.

You'll be told that without a minimum wage employers would pay poverty wages, that it reduces inequality, that it boosts consumption. Each time, look at who really benefits from the argument — and what the data says.