Wages covered by company agreements rose this year more than in the previous one, registering an increase of 3.38% up to August, the highest percentage in nearly a decade, according to data released today by the Ministry of Labor.
It is an increase that this year beats inflation, which has not happened since 2020, when prices fell due to the pandemic, but salaries continued to rise. However, it is below what was agreed between unions and employers.
The salary variation has been calculated by the Ministry of Labor based on 2,988 agreements registered until August that affect 906,816 companies and 9.2 million workers. Of these, 700 have been signed and registered this year and cover 2.4 million people.
The salary increase of 3.38% is higher than last year's 2.98% and exceeds the records of recent years. In 2016, salaries rose 1.09% and from that moment on they evolved upwards to 2.29% in 2019. With the pandemic, in 2020, the increase was still 1.73%, and it moderated to 1.45% in 2021, when the recovery triggered inflation, later exacerbated by the invasion of Ukraine.
This evolution is different from that of the CPI and shows that wages lag behind prices. Inflation closed last year at 8.4% and has moderated this year, reaching 2.6% in August, still with provisional data from the INE, three tenths above July.
Now inflation is below the wage increase for the first time since the recovery from the pandemic. In the years 2014, 2015, 2016, 2019 and 2020, salaries rose more than prices, which in some years even registered a negative evolution.
However, the salary increase is below what is recommended in the agreement for employment and collective bargaining (AENC) between the UGT and CCOO unions and the CEOE and Cepyme business associations. The proposal consists of an increase of 4% in 2023 and 3% in both 2024 and 2025.
The INE has also published today the latest data on cost per hour worked, which shows an increase of 6.5% in the second quarter of the year compared to the same period in 2022, the largest increase in three years, when it was reached a rise, when the pandemic arrived, of 8.1%.
With the rise in the cost per hour worked in the second quarter, there are also eight quarters of positive rates in the corrected series. The activities that registered the largest annual increases in labor costs were the extractive industries, of 11.3%, and the professional, scientific and technical industries, of 8.6%.
