What do Moroccans actually earn? What the HCP's official figures say

People often ask: "what should a mason or a farm worker earn?" The honest answer is that Morocco does not publish a recent official grid of daily wages by trade. What the Haut-Commissariat au Plan (HCP), the official statistics body, publishes covers large sectors and fairly old data. Here is what we verified in its documents, with dates and limits.

Average annual pay per employee by sector, 2014

Source: HCP, "Compte satellite de l'emploi 2014", table 10 (wage bill divided by the number of employees). The last column is our own simple arithmetic. The same document notes that the lowest average pay is in the "Agriculture and forestry" and "Services to households or other services" branches, and that average pay in "Financial and insurance activities" is almost twelve and a half times that of "Agriculture and fishing". It puts average hourly pay across the economy at 32.2 dirhams, more than double the hourly SMIG at the time (14.81 dirhams).

Wages declared to social security, 2015

The note "Le marché du travail au Maroc : défis et opportunités" (HCP and World Bank, November 2017) states that the average wage of workers declared to the CNSS outside agriculture was 5,088 dirhams a month in 2015, with a median wage of 2,725 dirhams. The median is the wage below which half of those declared are paid; it reflects reality better than the average, which high salaries pull upward.

Why these figures cannot price a day of work today

• They are old: 2014 and 2015. Pay, prices and the legal minimum have changed since (the hourly SMIG is 17.92 dirhams in 2026).
• The figure is an average per employee, part-time and seasonal work included; it is not the pay for one full day.
• They are for large sectors, not trades: no distinction between a plumber and a mason.
• They do not distinguish cities or experience levels.

So what do you do when pricing?

Start from what the law fixes: the hourly SMIG (17.92 dirhams since 1 January 2026) and the daily agricultural SMAG (97.44 dirhams since 1 April 2026), then compare several offers and agree in writing what the price includes. Our article on setting a fair price shows how to convert between hour, day and fixed price.