It’s in the air… On Thursday morning, I heard a debate on Luxe Radio that perfectly complemented my post on job offers for consultants, on the issue of hiring young Moroccan graduates of top French schools in Morocco.
To sum up:
- Moroccan families make considerable efforts to finance the cost of schooling in France, which is out of all proportion to the cost of Moroccan schools (to which must be added all the costs of expatriation). These efforts have to be recouped, which means that the starting salary for the first job is high.
- Moroccan companies, for their part, are unable to make such high salaries pay off, particularly for beginners. According to the Careers in Morocco study that served as the starting point for the debate, 41% of these graduates expect a school-leaving salary of 30,000 dirhams/month, which seemed far too high for the participants at the round table.
- In addition to profitability, Moroccan companies also have to respect fairness and a coherent salary scale, and cannot afford excessive differences with graduates from Moroccan schools.
- As a result, in general, the first job for a young Moroccan graduate will be abroad. For example, Orange, which was present at the round table, said that it hired almost exclusively locally in Morocco, and hired these ‘MDEs’ (Moroccans who had graduated abroad) for positions in France or Spain.
- After a few years, other concerns become more important, such as the balance between private and professional life, and young Moroccans are more prepared to make concessions to return to Morocco, to be closer to their families, etc.
- Finally, the quality of training was one of the issues raised, with the fact that there are now many public schools offering high-quality higher education in Morocco, whereas universities, with the exception of a few fields (human sciences, law), have curricula that do not at all correspond to the expectations of companies, turning them into factories for the unemployed.
How do you compare salaries in Western countries and Morocco?
Let’s take the example of France.
Schools are used to giving their students information on the salaries they can expect for a first job, based on both statistics and marketing objectives (the school also has to ‘sell’ itself to attract students).
The difficulty will therefore be to transpose these French salaries into Moroccan salaries, to really appreciate the pay gap.
Gross salary vs. net salary
In Morocco, negotiations are already based on net salary. Communication will be in terms of “net monthly salary“, even for executive positions, with the recruiter also mentioning bonuses, target bonuses and the thirteenth or fourteenth month. It is up to the candidate to reconstitute their “annual net salary” if they want to compare offers.
It can be quite complicated to reconcile a gross annual salary overseas with a net monthly salary in Morocco, not to mention exchange rate variations. If, for the sake of convenience, we continue to use the exchange rate of €1 = 10 dirhams, in reality, today, one euro is more than 11 dirhams.
Contributions’ value for money
This is the most unfavourable point in Morocco. The very poor quality of public health care makes private health insurance compulsory, much more so than in France. So, in addition to the net salary, you need to find out about the social package, checking the basis for reimbursement. (We’ll talk about this in more detail in another post. To sum up, doctors often charge between 200% and 300% of the ‘conventionné’ rate).
A different taxation approach
Finally, the calculation of income tax in Morocco is different from that in France. There is no concept of a tax household or family quotient. The scope for tax deductions is much more limited (no “Toubon law”, no subsidised investment in energy efficiency, etc). Above all, the tax brackets are much faster!
| Morocco | France | ||||
| Annual net income In dirhams |
Rate | Net annual income In euros |
Converted into dirhams | Rate | |
| Not taxable | 0 – 30,000 | 0 | 0 – 9,807 | 0 – 109,270 | 0 |
| Bracket 1 | 30,000 – 50,000 | 10% | 9,807 – 27,086 | 109,270 – 301,792 | 14% |
| Bracket 2 | 50,000 – 60,000 | 20% | 27,086 – 72,617 | 301,792 – 809,100 | 30% |
| Bracket 3 | 60,000 – 80,000 | 30% | 72,617 – 153,783 | 809,100 – 1.716,450 | 41% |
| Bracket 4 | 80,000 – 180,000 | 34% | > 153.783 | > 1.716,450 | 45% |
| Bracket 5 | > 180,000 | 38% | NA | ||
Comparing standard of living rather than salary or net income
From there, we can have fun comparing overall tax rates on salaries. In Morocco, with a net salary of 15,000 dirhams/month, you’re one of the privileged few (second last bracket of the IR), whereas in France you’re barely taxable at all. It is only for very high earners that the 45% bracket ‘hurts’ and evens out the overall tax rate.
So, apart from the problem of repaying loans used to finance studies, we need to look much more closely at the standard of living that a salary will provide, rather than focusing on the figures.
But this comparison is not as simple as it seems. The cost of living in Casablanca is not the same as in Rabat, nearby Marrakesh, agaAgadir - vivre or Tangier, to name but a few of the major cities.
Casablanca, for example, is the economic centre of Morocco. With its internationalisation and its role as an African hub, it attracts many foreigners and many fortunes, and regularly ranks among the most expensive cities in Africa.
If we think that it takes between 10,000 and 15,000 dirhams per adult to live properly in Morocco, in reality, the higher the level of income, the higher the cost of living increases, more than proportionally, to reach an almost European cost of living; the higher the income, the greater the tendency to spend on leisure, on property investment, on imported products that cost as much, if not more, than in Europe.
In other words, the “cost of living” advantage, which is real at the start of your career, will tend to diminish as your career progresses, if you want to lead a totally Westernised life.
Not to mention quality of life
Then there’s the final factor to consider, which is difficult to quantify: the quality of life.
Beyond the tourist clichés of warm, friendly Moroccan hospitality, life in Morocco has many advantages:
- Firstly, because I’m writing this post in December, when a cold snap is about to hit Morocco and has already blanketed Europe with snow… the weather. With a few exceptions (Ouarzazate, the towns in the Rif), the weather in Morocco is much milder in winter. In the coastal towns, you can enjoy the beach all year round, and swim most of the time.
- a certain relaxed way of life, with a better work-life balance. Businesses don’t work crazy hours, and Friday afternoons are quiet (because even if you want to work, some of your contacts will be at the mosque, eating couscous, digesting couscous…).
- for young Moroccans, being close to their family is a plus.
- a state of mind that is generally much more dynamic and positive than the depressed French; Marie-Aude often says that Morocco is too poor to allow itself to mourn its past glory as France does, it is content to move forward and develop.
- in the midst of a cumbersome and fussy administrative environment, it’s easier to create new projects and set up your own business: unlike France, you can often work around the constraints (and without necessarily having to resort to corruption).
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