On this page
- The headline: still good jobs, just a touch slower
- What the first job actually pays
- The number that matters more than the first one
- Where the money is: sector and geography
- How people actually get hired
- The gender gap is there from day one
- One thing that is genuinely new
- How to read this for your own decision
Every prospective MiM student eventually asks the same question: what does this actually lead to? Most answers you find online are either a single school’s polished placement report or a recruiter’s round number. France happens to have something better — a 33-year-old national survey that tracks where grande école graduates land, on what contract, in which sector, and for how much.
It is called the CGE insertion survey, run every year by the Conférence des grandes écoles with the national statistics school ENSAI. The 2025 edition covers 204 of 208 eligible schools and surveyed 214,021 graduates. I read all 86 pages of it, pulled the numbers that matter for a Master in Management, and cross-checked the trajectory against INSEE’s national salary data. Here is what it actually shows.
One note before the numbers. The survey splits graduates into three groups: ingénieurs (engineering schools), managers (business and management schools), and autres spécialités (Sciences Po, architecture, journalism, and so on). The MiM cohort is the managers group, so that is the one I focus on throughout. And every salary the CGE reports is gross — I will flag net where it matters, because the difference is large in France.
The headline: still good jobs, just a touch slower
The big story in 2025 is a soft landing, not a crash. The net employment rate for the latest business-school class fell to 78.3 percent, down from a 90.5 percent record in 2023. That sounds dramatic, but the net employment rate measures the most recent class only about six months after they finish — it is the figure most exposed to the hiring cycle, and cadre recruitment cooled in 2024. Give it time and it recovers fast:
| Business-school graduates | ~6 months out | ~18 months out | ~2 years out |
|---|---|---|---|
| Net employment rate | 78.3% | 90.8% | 94.9% |
| On a permanent CDI contract | 86.6% | 91.7% | 95.6% |
| Cadre (manager/professional) status | 77.6% | 78.1% | 82.5% |
Two years after graduating, 95 percent of business-school graduates are employed and 96 percent of those are on a permanent contract. That is the number to anchor on, not the six-month snapshot.
The speed is the part that surprised me even though I lived it. Among employed graduates of the 2024 class, 80 percent found their job within two months of finishing — and 61 percent of them had signed a contract before they even graduated. The MiM is one of the few degrees where a large share of people walk across the graduation stage already employed.
What the first job actually pays
Here is the salary table everyone scrolls down for. These are gross annual figures, France-based, full-time, for the business-school cohort:
| Business-school grads, France | 2024 class | 2023 class | 2022 class |
|---|---|---|---|
| Median, excluding bonus | €40,000 | €43,000 | €43,000 |
| Mean, excluding bonus | €41,103 | €42,514 | €44,328 |
| Median, including bonus | €44,000 | €45,000 | €48,000 |
| Mean, including bonus | €46,572 | €48,435 | €50,738 |
| Bottom 10% earn under | €32,000 | €32,000 | €34,000 |
| Top 10% earn over | €53,000 | €60,000 | €60,000 |
So the typical French MiM graduate starts at €40,000 gross excluding bonus, or €44,000 including it. The middle 80 percent of the 2024 class sit between roughly €32,000 and €53,000.
Now the part most salary discussions skip. That €40,000 is gross. A French cadre takes home roughly 78 percent of gross after social contributions, so €40,000 gross is about €31,000 net in your account. This matters enormously when you compare a Paris MiM salary to, say, a US or UK number, because those are often quoted closer to net. I went deeper on that cross-border confusion in France vs the US for a MiM.
The €40,000 figure is also why I keep telling people the school placement averages can mislead you: a single school’s “average starting salary” blends consulting offers in Dubai with marketing roles in Lyon. The CGE national median is the honest floor for the whole sector.
The number that matters more than the first one
A starting salary is a single data point. What you actually want to know is the slope. Comparing the 2024 class to the 2022 class — the same job market, two years apart — the mean salary excluding bonus climbs from €41,103 to €44,328. That is +7.8 percent in two years, and with bonuses the jump is bigger because bonus weight grows as you move up.
That early slope is just the on-ramp. France classifies MiM graduates as cadres, and the cadre track is where the real compounding happens. INSEE’s national data puts the mean net salary across all private-sector cadres at €55,983 in 2024 — that is net, across every age and seniority level, which works out to roughly €73,000 gross. A graduate starting at €40,000 gross is at the very bottom of that ladder. The CGE first-job number tells you where you step on; the INSEE cadre average tells you where the staircase goes.
This is the framing I wish someone had given me before I applied. The MiM is not a degree you buy for the year-one salary. It is a degree you buy for the cadre status it confers on day one and the trajectory that status unlocks. I unpack the full payback math in is the MiM worth it in 2026 and the four-lens HEC Paris ROI breakdown.
Where the money is: sector and geography
Not all MiM jobs pay the same, and the survey is blunt about it. By sector, for new business-school graduates:
| Sector | Share of grads | Mean (excl. bonus) | Median |
|---|---|---|---|
| Banking & insurance | 15.8% | €47,863 | €45,000 |
| Consulting | 22.2% | €43,948 | €43,000 |
| Legal / accounting / management | 6.8% | €41,623 | €41,500 |
| IT services | 8.8% | €39,973 | €40,000 |
| Retail / commerce | 8.0% | €37,030 | €36,200 |
Banking-insurance and consulting are both the largest recruiters and the best payers — together they take nearly 40 percent of the cohort. Retail, communication-marketing, and agri-food cluster at the bottom, around €37,000. If you go into the program with a fixed salary target, your specialisation and sector choice move the number more than your school does. That is exactly the trap I describe in the marketing career path post — marketing is a fantastic career, but it sits at the lower-paying end of the MiM distribution and you should know that going in.
Geography matters just as much. 72 percent of business-school graduates who work in France are in the Paris region, and Paris pays a premium: a mean of €43,071 gross in Île-de-France versus €36,095 in the provinces — a €7,000 gap. The cost of living eats some of that, but the roles and the ceiling are higher in Paris.
And 15 percent of business-school graduates start their career abroad — the highest share of the three groups. The destinations are revealing, and so are the salaries the CGE reports for them:
- Switzerland — mean €84,202 gross
- United Kingdom — €73,191
- Germany — €63,442
- Luxembourg — €51,039 (the single most common destination for managers)
A French MiM is, in practice, a European passport for work. The brand and the cadre status travel. I wrote about what it is actually like to build a life and career in France versus elsewhere, but the data confirms the optionality is real.
How people actually get hired
The survey also asks how graduates found the job, which is more useful than any generic advice:
- LinkedIn and professional networks: 18 percent — the single biggest channel for business-school graduates
- End-of-studies internship that converted to an offer: 17 percent
- The apprenticeship employer keeping them on: 16 percent
- Online job search overall (LinkedIn plus job and company sites): 36 percent
The lesson is the one I keep repeating: the internship is a nine-month job interview, and LinkedIn is not optional. When graduates were asked what they prioritised in choosing the job, the role’s content (60 percent) and fit with their career plan (51 percent) beat salary (42 percent) — which tracks with the high satisfaction scores. The 2024 class rates their job 4.2 out of 5, and 91 percent say it matches their qualification level. The mechanics of getting there start well before graduation, which is why I put so much weight on building the profile early.
The gender gap is there from day one
The one number that has not improved, year after year, is the gender gap — and it starts immediately. In the 2024 business-school class, men earned a mean €42,583 gross versus €39,662 for women, a 7.4 percent gap at entry. It widens once bonuses are counted (€49,612 vs €43,611), and women also had a lower net employment rate (75.2 percent vs 81.6 percent).
It gets worse, not better, with time. INSEE’s data on the full population of private-sector cadres shows men earning around 15 percent more than women on a full-time-equivalent basis — €59,312 net versus €50,590 in 2024. The entry gap is the smallest the gap will ever be. Worth knowing, and worth negotiating against from the first offer.
One thing that is genuinely new
For the first time, the 2025 survey asked graduates whether they use generative AI at work. Three-quarters of business-school graduates (75 percent) said yes — the highest of any group — mostly for writing (70 percent), research (51 percent), and summarising (48 percent). This is the shift I flagged in is the MiM worth it in 2026: AI is compressing the analyst-grunt layer of these jobs, and the parts that survive are exactly the judgment-and-people parts a MiM trains. The data now shows it is already inside the daily workflow of new graduates.
How to read this for your own decision
If you are weighing a French MiM, here is what the 2025 data tells you, stripped of spin. The job market is good and fast — most graduates are employed within two months, almost always on a permanent contract, almost always as a cadre. The first salary is modest in net terms (~€31,000) but the cadre trajectory it buys is steep. Your sector and city move your pay more than your school’s ranking does. And the degree is, functionally, a European work permit.
For the live, school-by-school version of these numbers, I keep the MiM salary and careers page for France updated with each program’s reported outcomes and the post-study work-visa rules. Pair that with the national picture here and you will have a more honest view than almost any applicant walking in. If you are still choosing between formats, MiM vs MBA is the next read.
The MiM does not hand you a salary. It hands you a starting line a long way up the cadre ladder, in a market that still rewards the things the degree teaches. What you do from there is the part the survey cannot measure.
Sources: Conférence des grandes écoles, “Enquête insertion des diplômés des Grandes écoles — Résultats 2025” (June 2025), fieldwork December 2024–March 2025. INSEE, mean net annual salary of private-sector cadres, full-time equivalent (Base Tous salariés, series 010752321). All CGE salaries are gross; INSEE figures are net.