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UPDATE: Paris City Hall says plan for new lockdown just a ‘hypothesis’

Paris city hall announced on Thursday that authorities in the French capital want to impose a three-week lockdown rather than just a weekend confinement before appearing to backtrack on the idea on Friday.

Published: 25 February 2021 21:22 CET
UPDATE: Paris City Hall says plan for new lockdown just a 'hypothesis'
Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo with deputy Emmanuel Gregoire. Photo: Bertrand Guay / AFP

The initial announcement was made by Emmanuel Grégoire, Mayor Anne Hidalgo’s deputy, and came just hours after the Prime Minister Jean Castex put Paris and 19 other areas of France on “heightened surveillance” due to rising Covid-19 infection rates.

The French capital, along with the whole of the greater Paris region, plus départements in the north and south east of the country face new restrictions such as weekend lockdowns from March 6th if the situation does not improve.

On Thursday Grégoire said Paris intended to go further than a weekend lockdown and would suggest a three-week confinement. The measure was to be presented to the Paris préfecture and regional health authority. 

“The trajectory is worrying and without doubt it requires additional measures,” he told France Info.

He described the current 6pm-6am curfew that has been imposed in the capital and across the country as worse than a lockdown, saying it was a “half measure with bad results”.

“We cannot be forced to live in a semi-prison for months on end,” he said saying a weekend lockdown was “highly restrictive” on society and would have “little impact on the health situation.”

“We can’t carry on with half measures that lead us towards an inevitable lockdown,” Grégoire told BFM TV later. 

Government spokesman Gabriel Attal said the proposal would be looked at.

But giving a press conference the following morning the deputy mayor of Paris appeared to backtrack saying a new lockdown in the capital was just a “hypothesis”.

“We are not proposing to put a lockdown in place in Paris,” he said. “But we think the policy of half-measures with questionable results is a form of a never-ending cycle.

“It (lockdown) was never a proposition, I stress again that it was just a hypothesis.”

“The figures are not good and the direction is not good,” he said. 

“We have been living under a curfew for 140 days, the restaurants and bars have been closed since October 29th,” he said adding that City Hall chiefs would work through the weekend to come up with propositions.

At present the lockdown proposal is only for the city of Paris, but during earlier regional restrictions Paris and the petite couronne – the inner suburbs of Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne and Hauts-de-Seine – coordinated measures. 

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COST OF LIVING

What is considered a good salary in Paris?

The higher-paying jobs are heavily concentrated in the French capital, but set against that is the high cost of living - especially the cost of renting or buying a home. So what is considered a 'high-earner' in Paris?

Published: 25 June 2024 16:51 CEST
What is considered a good salary in Paris?

Centrist Renaissance candidate Sylvain Maillard, running for re-election in France’s snap parliamentary elections, was trying to highlight the high cost of living in the capital in a debate on RMC Radio 

“You have extremely expensive rents [in Paris], between €1,500 and €1,700, and then there are all the charges and taxes to pay,” he said.

But what most people seized on was his comment that anyone earning €4,000 a month after tax would not be considered rich in Paris – he predictably was accused of being out of touch with French people’s lives.

There’s no doubt that €4,000 a month is good salary that most people would be happy with – but how much do you need to earn to be considered ‘rich’ in Paris?

National averages

Earlier this year, the independent Observatoire des Inégalités calculated poverty and wealth levels in France.

READ ALSO How much money do you need to be considered rich in France?

According to its calculations, to be considered ‘rich’ in France, a single person with no dependants needs to earn more than €3,860 per month, after taxes and social charges. Around eight percent of single workers have this sum deposited into their bank balance every month, it said.

A total of 23 percent of workers take home €3,000 or more every month, while the top 10 percent clear €4,170. 

To be in the top one percent of earners in France in 2024, one person must bring in at least €10,000 per month. After taxes and social charges.

The median income – the median is the ‘middle value’ of a range of totals – of tax households in mainland France is €1,923 per month after taxes and social charges, according to INSEE 2021 data, which means that a ‘rich’ person earns about twice as much as a person on the median income, according to the Observatoire.

Paris situation

About 75 percent of people living in Paris earn less than €4,458 per month, according to Insee data – so according to those calculations, 25 percent of Parisians earn the equivalent of the top 10 percent in France. 

But that city-wide average still hides a wide degree of variation. In the sixth arrondissement, the median income is €4,358 per month, after tax. In the seventh, it’s €4,255.  Further out, those bringing home €4,600 a month in the 19th and 20th arrondissements are among the top 10 percent in wealth terms.

But still, the median income in Paris is €2,639, significantly higher than the €1,923 France-wide median.

That would mean – using the Observatoire des Inégalités’ starting point for wealth – that a Paris resident, living on their own, would have to bring home €5,278 per month to be considered ‘rich’. 

France is a heavily centralised country, with many of the highest-paying industries concentrated within the capital, meaning there is much more opportunity to secure a high-wage job if you live in Paris.

Cost of living

Even these figures should all be taken with a pinch of salt because of the relatively high cost of living in the capital, compared to elsewhere in France. Paris is objectively an expensive place to call home.

In 2023, France Stratégie published a report on the disposable income of French households, after housing, food and transport costs were deducted. It found that, on average, people living in the Paris region had more left to spend, due to higher incomes and despite the fact that housing costs more.

It’s the income paradox in action. A person with a take-home salary of €4,000 per month has more money to spend if they live and work outside Paris. But they’re much more likely to earn that much if they live and work in Paris, where it’s not as valuable. 

Someone who earns a ‘rich-level’ salary in Paris might not appear rich – because they live in an expensive area, and a surrounded by very wealthy people in property that’s out of reach all-but the fattest of wallets. But they’re still earning more than twice the median income in France.

And that’s what Sylvain Maillard was getting at, clumsily as he may have expressed it.

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