Stage, alternance or neither: how French early-career contracts actually pay

French early-career hiring runs on contract types, and the type decides your income more than the employer does. Two people doing the same work in the same company can be paid nothing, the legal minimum, or most of the SMIC, depending entirely on which contract they are on and how long it runs. That is unusual, and it is worth understanding before you start applying rather than after you have an offer.

The stage, and the threshold that decides whether it pays

A stage is an internship tied to your studies. Whether it has to pay you is a question about duration, not about generosity.

The gratification minimale becomes obligatory once the internship runs longer than two consecutive months. Two months means 44 days at seven hours a day, or 309 hours in total, and the hours count even if they are not continuous. Below that threshold, nothing is legally owed. Above it, the minimum is 4,50 euro per hour of internship, which is set as 15% of the hourly social security ceiling.

Read that as a design, because employers do. A stage of just under two months is a stage that costs nothing. When you see a two-month internship advertised, the length is not an accident, and the single most useful question you can ask is how many hours the contract actually specifies.

It is a legal floor and not a salary. Nothing stops an employer paying more, plenty do, and the floor is low enough that in Paris it will not cover your rent. Treat it as the number below which something is wrong, not as the going rate.

The alternance, which is the one that is actually a job

An apprenticeship contract is open from 16 to 29 years old inclusive. It runs from six months to three years, with at least a quarter of the time spent in a training centre, and it is real employment rather than a placement.

Pay is a percentage of the SMIC that climbs with age and with the year of the contract: from 27% of the SMIC for a minor in the first year, up to 100% of the SMIC from 26 onwards. The consequence is blunt. If you are 26 or over, an apprenticeship pays the full SMIC, which makes it a completely different proposition from the same contract offered to a 19-year-old, and it is frequently overlooked by people who assume apprenticeships are for school leavers.

There is also a trial window worth knowing in both directions: the contract can be ended without giving a reason during the first 45 days actually worked in the company.

After the diploma: twelve months that do not renew

With a French qualification at master's level or equivalent, you can hold a titre de séjour recherche d'emploi. It runs for twelve months, lets you look for and take work with no limit on working time, and lets you prepare to set up a business.

Two details change how you should use it. It does not renew, so the twelve months are all of them. And it can be requested up to four years after you obtained the diploma, including if you left France in between, which means it is an option you can come back for rather than one you must use immediately or lose.

What is actually on the French market, from our own board

We hold 456 live French postings. The shape of them says something useful about where to look.

Paris is overwhelming. It is not the largest cluster so much as it is the market, with Montpellier, Bordeaux, Lyon and Toulouse present but small, plus a real set of listings open to anywhere in France. Unlike the UK board, a meaningful number of French postings are typed as internships and a few as apprenticeships, so in France searching for stage and alternance by name genuinely works.

On pay, France is at 0% to 5% in our count. Close to nothing. Which is the practical reason the contract rules above matter so much: the advert is very unlikely to tell you what the job pays, so the legal floors are often the only number you have before the conversation.

How to use all of this

• Ask for the hours, not the months. The duration threshold is measured in days and hours, and 309 hours is the number that decides whether a stage owes you anything.
• If you are 26 or over, look at alternance seriously. Full SMIC and an employment contract is a different offer from the one the word apprenticeship suggests.
• Search in French, with the contract words. Stage, alternance, apprentissage and contrat de professionnalisation are the terms the listings actually use, and searching in English filters out most of the market.
• Keep the recherche d'emploi permit in reserve deliberately. Four years of optionality is worth more than starting the clock early because it was available.

Every figure here is read off service-public.gouv.fr and linked below. These amounts are indexed and change, so check the source before you rely on one.