Twenty days off, seventeen paid, 625.72 € net

An employee on 2 400 € gross a month is off sick for twenty days. They expect half their salary, around 800 €. They will receive 625.72 € net. Before you read on: where did the 175 € difference go?

Three salaries and a divisor of 91.25

The daily sickness benefit is not computed on the salary of the month of the absence. It starts from a daily reference wage, rebuilt from a reference period.

For a monthly-paid employee, that daily reference wage is the total of the three last gross salaries received before the sick leave, divided by 91.25.

The 91.25 divisor is not arbitrary: it represents the average number of days in three months, that is 365 divided by 4. It brings a quarterly salary down to a daily basis.

An employee on 2 400 € gross a month therefore shows a daily reference wage of 7 200 divided by 91.25, that is 78.90 €.

A cap, a half, and three days that drop out

The salary used in the computation is capped at 1.4 times the monthly minimum wage, that is 2 613.82 € in 2026. A higher salary produces no further benefit at all.

The cap's effect shows in one example. An employee on 3 000 € gross has a daily reference wage of 98.63 €, half of which would be 49.32 €; they will receive only 42.97 €, the trimming having happened upstream, on the reference salary.

The daily benefit then equals 50 % of the daily reference wage. Our employee therefore receives 39.45 € gross for each day paid.

That mechanism explains the benefit cap shown at 42.97 € gross: it is exactly half of the daily reference wage computed on the capped salary, that is 85.93 € divided by two.

Finally, benefits are paid only after a waiting period of three days, which applies to EACH new absence. Twenty days off therefore give seventeen days paid.

That per-absence rule has a blunt consequence for short absences. A three-day absence opens strictly no daily benefit at all, and three separate three-day absences in a year open no more.

It is one reason why many sector agreements provide for the employer to maintain salary over that period. Absent such a clause, the first three days stay at the employee's expense.

What the gross loses before it arrives

Daily benefits are not paid free of everything. They bear the general social contribution at 6.2 % and the social debt repayment contribution at 0.5 %.

On 670.65 € gross of benefits, the 6.7 % deduction comes to 44.93 €. The employee receives 625.72 €, a long way from half their monthly salary.

The length of payment is itself bounded: 360 days of daily benefits over a maximum period of three years, extended to three years where a long-term condition is recognised.

That counter runs on a rolling basis, not by calendar year. At each new absence the fund looks back over the three elapsed years and checks that the total of days already paid has not reached 360.

An absence longer than six months triggers stricter entitlement conditions: twelve months of affiliation and 600 hours worked over the twelve preceding months, or contributions on a salary equal to 2 030 times the hourly minimum wage.

The two bounds combine into an absolute maximum. An employee permanently at the cap cannot receive more than 42.97 € a day over 360 days, that is 15 469.20 € gross across three years, whatever their real salary.