Margen
Five hundred and ninety-eight euros leave your company's account every month in your name, and you sign nothing. If your payslip says €2,000 gross, your job costs €2,598 before anything else. Those €598 are your contribution, under your social security number, and your pension comes out of them.
The breakdown is public and has been the same for years. On your contribution base — your gross pay, roughly speaking — four fixed contributions are paid, and the company puts up the larger share of each:
1. Common contingencies (ordinary illness, retirement): 28.30% in total, of which the company pays 23.60% and you pay 4.70%. 2. Unemployment, on a permanent contract: 7.05%, with 5.50% from the company and 1.55% from you. 3. FOGASA, the public fund that pays wages if the company goes under: 0.20%, entirely the company's. You put up nothing. 4. Vocational training: 0.70%, with 0.60% from the company and 0.10% from you.
Add up the company column: 29.90%. On €2,000 that is those €598, paid the same day as your wages and appearing nowhere you would ever add them up. Your column comes to €127, 6.35%, and those you do see deducted on the paper.
Two more items are paid by the company alone. Accidents at work and occupational illness: the premium comes from an official schedule depending on what you do, 1.50% if you work in an office and 6.70% in construction. And the MEI, the surcharge that has been fattening the pension reserve since 2023: in 2026 it is 0.90%, five sixths of it paid by the company.
With the office premium, those €2,000 gross cost €2,643 a month: 598 from the four fixed contributions, 30 from accident cover and 15 from the MEI. Over twelve payments, €24,000 gross against €31,716 of cost.
Overtime has a table of its own, and not all of it costs the same: hours worked under force majeure contribute at 14.00% (12.00% from the company, 2.00% from you) and the rest contributes like ordinary pay, at 28.30%. Which means an ordinary overtime hour costs the company twice as much in contributions as an emergency one.
The type of contract moves the figure. If yours is a full-time fixed-term contract, unemployment goes from 7.05% to 8.30% and the company's share from 5.50% to 6.70%: on the same €2,000 gross, twenty-four euros more a month purely for having an end date.
That figure is good for three things.
Setting up on your own: the number to beat is €31,716. A freelancer billing €24,000 is almost eight thousand euros below what their old job cost, and is paying their own contributions on top. Rates are worked out from the cost to the employer.
Asking for a rise: every €100 of gross increase moves €132 in your company's accounts. That explains why you are sometimes offered meals, private health cover or training instead of salary: some items are taxed differently and come cheaper.
And arguing about the contribution ceiling with the 2025 small print to hand. The maximum base is €5,101.20 a month in 2026 — €61,214.40 a year —, and above that figure the usual contributions stop rising. What did start being charged on 1 January 2025 is an additional solidarity contribution on the part of the salary above the cap: in 2026 it runs from 1.15% to 1.46% depending on how far above you are, and it is split between company and worker in the same proportion as common contingencies, so more than 83% of it is paid by the company.
And it can be checked in thirty seconds. Since May 2015 the official payslip template has required the contributions the company pays for you to be printed in a separate section: it is at the bottom, usually headed "employer contribution" or "determination of social security contribution bases". Take this month's payslip, find that box, add up what it says and write that figure next to your gross.