Monaco's economy: more salaried workers than residents

Who produces Monaco's output and where they live

The Institut monégasque de la statistique et des études économiques, IMSEE, counts as salaried anyone who worked at least one hour in December. By that definition Monaco's payrolls, public and private together, held 65,680 people at the end of 2024. The resident population that year, all nationalities included, was 38,423. The institute reports that 87.5% of the employees were domiciled outside Monaco, and in its report on the 2024 accounts it calls the situation very singular, possibly unique in the world.

The two populations have moved at different speeds. In 2015 IMSEE counted 37,900 residents and 42,931 salaried workers who lived elsewhere. By 2024 residents numbered 38,423 and non-resident employees 57,452, of whom 54,467 worked for private employers and 2,985 in the public sector. The resident count hardly moved across the decade, and almost all of the growth in the working-day population came across the frontier each morning.

The record gives a population of 38,857 on 1 January 2025, on ground the principality has had to build for itself, which the geography article follows hectare by hectare. The payroll is expected to keep growing: projections reported by Monaco Hebdo in November 2025 put the number of workers at 98,900 by 2062 on low estimates.

Wages are the second of the two large blocks of income. Compensation of employees came to 4.4 billion euros in 2024, 41.0% of GDP before subsidies, and it rose 11.7% that year, more than three times the growth in the number of employees. Firms' gross operating surplus was the larger block, at about 4.9 billion euros and 45.6%.

Why Monaco's statisticians changed the divisor

The European system of accounts divides output by the resident population to give GDP per inhabitant, and the World Bank applies that rule to Monaco. Its series in the record gives total output of about 11.1 billion United States dollars in 2024 and 288,002 dollars a head. IMSEE considers that the resident population leaves out most of the people who create the output, and that the usual per-inhabitant indicator therefore says little about Monaco.

Since 2005 the institute has published a GDP "per capita", in quotation marks, calculated over a reference population that adds non-resident employees to residents. That population was 80,831 in 2015 and 95,874 in 2024. Output per member of it reached 107,213 euros in 2024, up 6.2% after inflation, and up 28.9% in real terms since 2015. Since 2010 IMSEE has also published GDP per salaried worker, which it uses as a measure of productivity.

The per-worker figure is the one IMSEE sets against France. In constant 2020 euros, output per salaried worker was 140,025 in Monaco and 96,520 in France in 2024, a gap of 45.1%. In 2015 the gap was 22.3%. French output per worker grew 1.1% in 2024 and Monaco's 5.2%, and the French data for 2023 and 2024 are still provisional.

How IMSEE measures an economy without national accounts

Monaco calculated its GDP for the first time in 2005. The government's working group of that year had first to define the economic territory and list the agents operating in it. The customs and monetary union with France, together with the absence of any system of national accounts, means that some of the information other countries use does not exist in Monaco.

IMSEE therefore measures GDP from the income side: the pay of employees, the gross operating surplus of firms and taxes on production, less subsidies. The institute chose that approach because it did not require national accounts to be set up first. Salaries come from the Caisses Sociales de Monaco. Operating surplus comes from a survey, which in 2024 reached 11,999 economic agents, with 79.9% of files processed. The rest is extrapolated by legal form and sector, and the 100 companies with the highest turnover are handled separately, so that their unusual results are not copied onto the firms that did not reply. Inflation is removed with the French GDP price index published by INSEE.

Two limits follow, and IMSEE states both. Monaco still works to the 1995 version of the European system of accounts and has not adopted the 2010 revision, which counts research spending as investment. It has also never estimated imputed rents, the rent owner-occupiers would pay if they were tenants. Both omissions push the estimate down.

Each year's figure is also revised as late declarations arrive. The 8.8% real growth published for 2024 in November 2025 was not final, because some companies had still not sent in their accounts. The World Bank series in the record gives 8.5% for the same year, and the two figures are left side by side here.

Why a single transaction can move Monaco's growth rate

At 10.28 billion euros of output in 2024, one large deal shows up in the total. The director of IMSEE told Monaco Hebdo in November 2025 that the year Mbappé was sold to Paris Saint-Germain produced 1.5 points of growth, and that at Monaco's scale a single operation can make GDP fluctuate. The institute had expected growth of 5.6% for 2024 and measured 8.8%.

Real output fell 3.2% in 2017 and 13.2% in 2020, then rose 22.2% in 2021 and 11.3% in 2022. Across 2015 to 2024 it grew 52.9% in volume, an average of 4.8% a year, which IMSEE sets beside 28% for the world economy, 13% for the euro area and about 11% for France over the same years.

The director gave two causes for 2024. The first was the completion of Mareterra, the district built on the sea off Larvotto and unveiled in December 2024: the builders' wages, the lunches they bought and the financial operations of buying and renting property all passed through the accounts. Construction output rose 23.8% to 984.5 million euros. The second was the arrival of many top-level sportsmen and sportswomen who, in his words, came with substantial portfolios. Other service activities, the group that includes sport, grew 68.1% to 462.8 million euros.

A third jump was administrative. Public administration, education, health and social work rose 33.4% to 755.0 million euros because a new complementary pension fund, the Caisse Monégasque de Retraite Complémentaire, collected its first contributions.

Which sectors carry Monaco's income

IMSEE divides the economy into twelve broad sectors. Every one of them grew in current euros in 2024 except retail, and five grew by more than 10%.

The first three together made up 50.6% of GDP in 2024. Scientific, technical and support services grew 7.1%, mostly from the operating surplus of specialised consulting firms and from payrolls in temporary work. Construction passed wholesale trade in 2024 for the first time since 2020.

Finance grew 4.8% in 2024 although the sector's operating surplus fell, because pay in monetary intermediation rose enough to carry it. Banks in Monaco specialise in private banking, asset management and wealth management, and consolidated banking assets were 8.42 times GDP in 2015. The register of companies in 2026 held 5,003 firms in finance, insurance and real estate, 2,330 in services and 793 in wholesale trade.

Retail shrank 3.4% in 2024. IMSEE traces the fall to lower net results in specialised clothing shops and car dealerships, and notes that pay in the sector rose all the same.

How Monaco raises revenue with no income tax

Monaco has never levied income tax on individuals. The absence has drawn wealthy residents from other European countries whose income is mostly earned outside Monaco. The state's revenue comes from other lines: a 20% value added tax on goods and services, commercial transaction taxes, state monopolies on tobacco and the postal service, and franchises that include the casino. Social contributions are high, at 28% to 40% of gross salary for employers and 10% to 14% for employees.

IMSEE's taxes on production came to 1.4 billion euros in 2024, up 3.2%, carried once more by VAT and especially by VAT on property. The same line includes payments from France under the VAT sharing account, one of the mechanics of the customs union.

The absence of income tax produced a crisis with France in 1962, which the history article places in the longer quarrel. Britannica describes the settlement as taxing French citizens with less than five years' residence in Monaco at French rates, and taxing Monegasque companies doing more than 25% of their business outside the principality. The Wikipedia account states that French citizens resident in Monaco pay French income and wealth taxes under a bilateral treaty, and that companies pay 33% corporation tax on profits unless at least three quarters of their turnover is generated in Monaco. The two accounts differ on the residence condition, and both are given here.

In 2023 the government recorded revenue of 2.19 billion euros against expenditure of 2.07 billion, a surplus of 126 million. The Constitutional Reserve Fund stood at 7 billion euros in 2023, up from 5.7 billion in 2019. IMSEE reports a further surplus for 2024.

What the casino and the hotels still earn

The Société des Bains de Mer was founded in 1863 by decree of Charles III, and the company's own history counts more than 170,000 visitors to Monte Carlo in 1869. The government and the princely family hold a majority interest in it, and it owns the Casino de Monte-Carlo along with the principal hotels, sports clubs, restaurants and nightclubs. Britannica records that the state took over the casino's operations in 1967 and that the operating company contributes less than 5% of the annual state budget, without giving a year. Monegasque citizens may not enter the gaming rooms.

The hotels are measured more closely. In 2025 Monaco had 13 classified hotels with 2,460 rooms, an occupancy rate of 64.5% against 61.8% in 2024, 353,875 guest arrivals and 907,826 person-nights. Just under half of hotel guests in 2025 came from outside the European Union. Cruise ships made 137 calls in 2025 and landed 92,023 passengers.

Accommodation and food service produced 828.8 million euros of GDP in 2024, 36.8% above its 2019 level after the losses of 2020. Its turnover reached 1.14 billion euros in 2025, up 6.3%, in a year when turnover across the whole principality fell 7.6%: lodging brought in 812 million euros and restaurants 328 million. Just under 9,000 people worked in the sector at the end of 2025, out of about 60,000 private-sector employees.

What Monaco makes on ground it built

Manufacturing, extraction and other industry produced 330.9 million euros in 2024, 3.2% of GDP, after growth of 22.9%. The principality has pursued small, high-value, non-polluting industries such as cosmetics, and Britannica places the light industry in Fontvieille.

Fontvieille itself is manufactured ground. The platform was built between 1966 and 1973 on a seabed that drops quickly to 30 or 40 metres. A first plan for 400,000 square metres was dropped for its environmental impact, and 220,000 square metres were reclaimed, with a marina of 55,000 square metres. Once built up, the platform carried the Stade Louis II, social housing, industrial floor space and administrative and commercial centres. The work depended on moving the railway underground, which negotiations with SNCF begun in 1954 completed in 1964.

Real estate produced 635.7 million euros of GDP in 2024, back to its 2022 level on the VAT from sales of several new developments. Prices averaged 58,300 dollars a square metre in 2012 and 53,378 dollars in 2020. Mareterra, a project of 2 billion euros, added about six hectares, and in 2025 the BBC reported that prices there were expected to start from 100,000 euros a square metre. None of its homes were reserved for Monegasques, who number nearly 10,000 and hold a right to subsidised housing.

How Monaco's money is tied to France

Monaco is outside the European Union. An economic and customs union with France covers customs, postal services, telecommunications and banking. The principality issued decimal coins of the Monégasque franc from 1837 to 2001 and adopted the euro in 2002 by arrangement with the Council of the European Union, with the right to put its own designs on the national side of its coins. The state keeps 45% of Monaco Telecom, with Cable & Wireless Communications holding 49% and Compagnie Monégasque de Banque 6%.

Outside bodies have reviewed the financial centre repeatedly. In 2000 a report by the French parliamentarians Arnaud Montebourg and Vincent Peillon alleged lax money-laundering policies, the casino included. The Financial Action Task Force wrote the same year that Monaco's anti-money-laundering system was "comprehensive" and that its financial intelligence unit, SICCFIN, lacked resources. The OECD dates are given differently by the sources. Britannica has Monaco added to the OECD blacklist of uncooperative tax havens in 2002 and removed in 2009 after committing to transparency standards. The Wikipedia account has the OECD naming Monaco in 2004 and placing it on its white list in 2009, after the principality signed twelve information exchange treaties.

In June 2024 the FATF added Monaco to its list of jurisdictions "under increased monitoring" over money laundering and terrorist financing, and said the principality needed to "address strategic deficiencies".