In 2024, salaries grew more than prices: while inflation averaged 2.8%, salaries increased by 5%, to 2,386 euros gross per month. This represents more than two points of gain in purchasing power, according to the salary statistics of Survey of the active populationdistributed this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics. This is a vigorous increase, but not as much as that which occurred in 2023 according to the same register, with an advance of 7.3% in a year in which inflation increased by 3.5% (which is equivalent to gaining almost four points of purchasing power).
Progress over the past two years softens the inflationary blow of 2022, right at the start of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, when prices grew 8.4% and wages only 2%. Then purchasing power fell by 6.4 points, on top of the 1.2 points lost in 2021, when prices were under pressure due to the supply crisis. The gain in 2023 and 2024 compared to the loss in 2021 and 2022 leaves a contraction in purchasing power of 1.7 points. But this avoids a broader view, since in previous years wages increased slightly more than prices.
These results are consistent with those issued by several recent studies, which indicate a stagnation of purchasing power in Spain in recent years. “Since 2007, real wages measured by purchasing power have remained practically stagnant, and in some periods have even decreased,” underlined a recent analysis by Fedea that explored the issue in depth.
This Fedea study, as also emerges from these EPA data, warns that in recent years there has been a greater increase in the lowest wages and a more moderate increase in intermediate wages. The 2024 EPA data shows that compared to 2023, the lowest deciles (one-tenth of employees, sorted into ten groups from lowest to highest and for which their average pay is calculated) increased their average pay by 10.1%, compared to a 3% increase in the fifth decile and 6.6% in the tenth, those who earn the most. If we broaden the vision, since 2018 (when Pedro Sánchez came to government and since then the minimum wage has grown by 61%), the first decile has grown by 48%, the fifth by 22.1% and the tenth by 19.6%.
Greater increase in EPAs than in agreements
It should be noted that this EPA data contrasts with another key wage statistic, which measures the evolution of wages agreed in the agreement (and which is updated month by month). This registry advanced 3.4% last year (1.6 points lower than the INE registry) and 3.7% in 2023 (3.6 lower than the EPA).
This means that average wages are growing more than what is shown in the agreement tables, which according to experts is due to several reasons. The office of the deputy general secretary of trade union policies of the UGT explains that the APE “reflects the actual salaries received by workers, including fixed and variable components (bonuses, overtime, incentives)”. “Therefore”, the union adds, “its evolution is conditioned by the occupational and sectoral structure of employment”.
“In contrast, the statistics of wage increases agreed in collective agreements come from the administrative register of collective bargaining, which includes the nominal wages agreed in the tables and their revisions. This is a normative indicator, not of actual perception, and is limited to workers covered by contracts” indicate by the UGT.
Therefore, statistics on agreements reflect how much the agreed tables grow, but not salaries as a whole. Luis Zarapuz, coordinator of the Confederal Economic Cabinet of the CC OO, highlights the “decoupling” between the two registers in recent years. In addition to the technical aspects that emerge from the UGT, this economist alludes to other reasons that explain the gap: he believes that the improvement of the productive fabric (with a lower weight of activities with lower added value and an increase in qualified ones) and the constraint of temporality in the labor reform (which is linked to more stable careers) are some of the reasons why the average salary grows more than the contractual tables.
Other wage statistics, such as the quarterly labor cost survey or that of the Revenue Agency, also record wage increases higher than those agreed in the agreement.
2,386 euros on average
Beyond the relevant data, INE statistics indicate that the average gross salary in Spain last year was 2,386 euros gross per month, an increase of 113 euros compared to 2023. The median salary (which, when ordering all individuals from the lowest to the highest salary, is right in the middle) stood at 2,001 euros, an increase of 66 euros compared to the previous year (+3.4%).
One of the great virtues of this statistic is that it breaks down into detail based on different variables. As can be seen from the INE press release on the matter, men have “a greater relative concentration in high salaries compared to women”: 34% earn 2,660 euros or more, compared to 26% of women. At the same time, the opposite happened for low-wage earners: 40% of them had a salary of less than 1,582 euros, compared to 21% of men. The average salary of women was 2,163 euros per month and that of men was 2,593.
Also noteworthy are the differences by age (those under 25 earn on average 1,373 euros and those over 55 2,681), by level of training (50% of employees with a higher qualification earn 2,660 euros or more, compared to 9% with a low qualification) and by size of the workplace (in those with up to nine employees, 54% earn less than 1,583 euros, almost the same proportion of 2,660 euros or more for staff with more than 250 members). By nationality, Spaniards earn on average 2,508 euros; those with dual nationality, 2,041 and foreigners; 1,846.
By territory, the highest salaries are those of the Basque Country (2,810 euros), Community of Madrid (2,762) and Navarra (2,589); and the lowest are those of Extremadura (2,127), the Region of Murcia (2,121) and the Canary Islands (2,052).
