Salary by qualification in France: what the data really says

“How much does a bachelor's graduate earn?”, “what salary after a master's?”: it is a fair question, but most answers found online mix up jobs that have nothing in common. This guide says honestly what public salary data can answer, how the site uses it to estimate your worth from your qualification, and where the limits are.

What the data knows, and what it doesn't

The site relies on salary data from INSEE, France's national statistics office: the average full-time-equivalent net salary of 435 occupations, in the private sector (2024) and the public service (2023), broken down by age band and sex. For the private sector, INSEE also publishes the gaps by company size and département, but for each broad occupational group (managers and professionals, intermediate occupations, clerical and service staff, manual workers), not occupation by occupation. These figures cover all employees within their scope, not a sample of volunteers, and that is their strength.

What they do not contain is the qualification. There is no “master's degree” or “vocational certificate” line in this data. And that makes sense: a qualification mostly works by opening or closing the door to occupations. Nursing or chartered accountancy require a specific diploma; engineers and finance managers are mostly recruited after long studies; other jobs are learnt on the job. Once you are in the occupation, experience, the employer and the town also make pay vary.

The public service is the exception where the link is written down: its jobs are classed in three categories by recruitment level. Category C recruits with no qualification or a vocational certificate (CAP, BEP), category B with at least the baccalauréat, category A with at least a two-year degree in the State civil service and a bachelor's degree in local government and hospitals. Pay then follows a grid by grade and step, where length of service moves you up.

From a qualification to a career-start age

To link your qualification to the data, the site's CV analysis turns it into a typical career-start age, then adds your years of experience. This “equivalent age” is used to read your occupation's salary-by-age curve. It is an assumption made by the site, not a measurement: it supposes that someone who starts later, after longer studies, begins higher up that curve than a beginner straight out of school.

These ages are a site convention, typical paths without repeated years or gap years, not an official statistic.

An example for a single occupation, at the national average, all company sizes. In this method, the gap between two qualifications comes only from the starting age: it exists at the start, then weighs less and less in proportion as experience builds up.

Between occupations, far bigger gaps

To measure the gap between occupations, here are a few private-sector occupations, one or two per broad socio-professional group, with their average net salary, the figure for the “under 30” band where it is published, and the gross annual equivalent. These gaps, measured by INSEE, are far bigger than the one the site's method attributes to the qualification within a single occupation.

Source: INSEE, all-employee database 2024, private sector, average net full-time-equivalent salaries. Gross annual: the site's conversion with the general-scheme engine, over twelve months.

The average salary by occupation page gives the same figures for every occupation, with the progression by age, the gap between women and men, and the départements where each group is best paid.

Same degree, what still makes pay vary

Once the occupation is chosen, two factors often weigh more, in the site's estimates, than the gap linked to the qualification: the size of the employer and the département. INSEE measures them for each broad occupational group, and the site applies those gaps to the occupation. For the occupation “Finance and accounting supervisors and technicians”, the estimated average gross annual salary ranges from €36,100 (Micro-business) to €45,700 (Large company), and reaches €48,300 in the département where its group is best paid (Yvelines). Then come the things averages cannot see: a sought-after speciality, an apprenticeship that counts as experience, internships in the target sector, and the ability to present all of it as results rather than a list of courses.

The limits to keep in mind

• Averages, not medians. A few very high salaries pull the average up: the median salary, the one that splits employees into two halves, is generally lower than the average shown.
• The field and the school matter, and the data cannot see them: two master's graduates in the same occupation can start at very different levels depending on their speciality, apprenticeship or internships.
• The age curve mixes everyone together. At a given age, it brings together employees with more or less education and more or less experience: the gap it gives between two qualifications is an approximation from the method, not a measurement of what the degree itself is worth.
• The data lags behind current job offers: the year the site uses is 2024 for the private sector and 2023 for the public service.
• A degree does not replace a negotiation. The starting figure is up for discussion: come in with a range grounded in the market rather than waiting for an offer.

Estimating what your profile is worth

The most reliable approach is to start from your own case: on What am I worth?, you upload your CV, the AI reads your occupation, qualification, experience and town, and the code works out your market value with the method above, including a range by company size. If you are just out of education, the guide to the CV for a first job helps you make the most of your degree, and the one on negotiating your starting salary helps you defend the figure you get.