More fear than harm for future apprentices, whose net salary will not be cut from January 1, 2026. The Social Security financing bill (PLFSS) for 2026 provides in particular for the “rationalization of particularly expensive devices”according to the explanatory memorandum of its article 9, and, among these, the exemption from employee contributions which apprentices benefit from. A advantage already planed since March 1, 2025, since the threshold ofexemption from contributions and CSG-CRDS was lowered from 79% to 50% of the minimum wage. A floor that the Social Security budget simply wants to remove for new contracts starting from January 1, 2026. The challenge for the government? Put an end to a “niche” whose estimated cost for 2025 peaks at 1.6 billion euros. “The impact of the measure would gradually increase due to its application only to the flow of new contractors: 320 million euros in 2026, then 1.2 billion euros from 2027”specifies the evaluation sheet for article 9 of the PLFSS.
So many welcome savings for public finances, but which the government can give up on. The deputies have, as during theexamination of the text in the Social Affairs Committee a few days earlier, adopted this Friday, November 7, a series of amendments from all sides removing this measure much criticized in the Hemicycle. “It is indecent to want to tax this income”thus raged the deputy for Bouches-du-Rhône Hendrik Davi (Ecologist and Social), the elected socialist from Seine-et-Marne Céline Thiébault-Martinez castigating a “full attack” of the purchasing power of apprentices with “a reduction of their remuneration of around 100 euros per month»and, taking into account the activity bonus, “a drop in income of several hundred euros for certain apprentices”. “It is the choice to attack our working youth”for his part decried the RN deputy for Moselle Alexandre Loubet.
An advantage of 188 euros for an apprentice paid the minimum wage compared to an employee
Faced with the indignation of the members of the lower house, the general rapporteur of the Social Security budget, Thibault Bazin (Republican Right), tried to defend this cut in the remuneration of apprentices, evoking the“injustice between an apprentice and an employee working in the same position with identical gross remuneration, the second contributing from the first euro”. An “injustice” that he quantified at 188 euros difference in net salary for apprenticesand which he intended to reduce to 86 euros by removing the exemptions from employee social contributions and CSG-CRDS for the part of apprentices’ remuneration located below 50% of the minimum wage. Giving an unfavorable opinion to the amendments to remove this measure, just like the Minister of Labor Jean-Pierre Farandou, the Social Security budget rapporteur proposed, as a compromise, to increase the exemption threshold to 25%. Without success. The deputies adopted at a overwhelming majority (232 votes for, 3 against) the removal of the end of exemptions. New apprentices who sign their contract from 2026 will therefore continue to benefit from their preferential regime.
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