The rampant inflation that has hit Spain—and practically the entire world—out of the pandemic and that has worsened the war in Ukraine has wreaked havoc, but the pensions that have come after are compensating for the lost purchasing power. Last year, Spanish workers recovered almost three points of purchasing power that they had lost during the cost of living crisis. Employees earned 5.3% more in 2023 on average for their work compared to the previous year, a percentage that more than covers the increase in prices, of 3.5% in the same period. If the count is made from 2022, when inflation took its biggest bite, they are, however, left behind. However, if the start of the inflation crisis in 2021 is taken into account, workers have gained about one point of purchasing power. In the case of pensions, which are revalued in line with the CPI, the rebound has been more marked last year, 8.4% according to the statistics published this Tuesday by the Tax Agency.
Both the salary revaluations promoted by the public and private sectors have contributed to these results. On the one hand, large companies and SMEs, although with different intensity, have generally raised the salaries of their workers in the heat of inflation and . In turn, civil servants have benefited from increases under the agreements between the unions and the Executive, which also
Thus, the average salary stood at 23,981 euros in 2023, compared to 22,781 euros the previous year, when there had already been a significant increase of 5.8%, according to the body dependent on the Ministry of Finance. In fact, the increase in compensation in 2022 was the most marked in the last 15 years. Only the 7.4% increase in 2007 exceeds it, but then the context was very different. There was no pandemic, no crazy price increases, no conflicts in the heart of Europe. On the contrary: the economy was buoyant, inflation controlled and the devastation that the financial crash would cause was not yet in sight.
Now, the Spanish economy continues to grow vigorously—much more than the eurozone and the rest of the advanced economies—albeit after two blows in a row, that of the pandemic and the energy crisis; but inflation is still not completely under control. Its escalation has slowed down after the successive increases in interest rates promoted by the European Central Bank (ECB) – which has already begun to lower them due to fear of cooling the economy too much – and the tax reduction policies applied by the Executive, such as reductions in food and energy VAT, but remains above the desired threshold of 2%.
The average pension, for its part, has grown from 14,857 euros to 16,188, marking the greatest advance at least since 1999, the year in which the agency dependent on the Ministry of Finance began to publish its statistics. These benefits, in fact, almost always rose above salaries and never experienced declines: sometimes they revalued more than inflation, sometimes less. But they never went down, and they were devalued on more than one occasion, especially at the time of the Great Recession.
It must be clarified that the information the Tax Agency offers is not entirely comparable with that of other sources, whether from the Ministry of Labor or . On the one hand, the data used are averages, which include both very high and very low remunerations, two extremes that end up distorting the final result – the median, that is, the value that divides the distribution into two halves, is more representative. .
Another difference with the rest of the publications is that not all territories are included: the Basque Country and Navarra, which have their own farms, do not appear in the statistics. Finally, the series does not take into account the time a worker remains in the labor market. He is counted as one more person, which increases the total number of employees, even if he works for only one month. For this reason, the Tax Agency also calculates the estimated average annual salary, with the aim of eliminating the downward bias caused by computing contracts of less than a full year, and excluding both the highest and lowest salaries. This variable was 30,801 euros in 2023, 5.3% more than the previous year. If the working population is divided into ten equal groups by income deciles, the lowest segment only received an average of 15,827 euros, compared to 77,019 for the highest decile.
Gaps
Despite the generalized increases in recent years, there are gaps that remain: between young people and the elderly, by gender and also depending on the territory of residence. Working women earned more in 2023 than a year before (21,298 euros on annual average compared to 20,138 in 2022), but by 5,092 euros, a difference that has widened slightly compared to the 2022 data. The gender distance exceeds 5,300 euros in the case of pensioners. There is also a chasm that separates the salary of employees between 18 and 25 years old and those between 56 and 65 years old: if the former received, on average, 9,055 euros per year in 2023, the latter received more than 29,000.
Another classic gap that is repeated is between Spaniards and foreigners: the average salary was 25,029 euros for the former, and 17,081 euros for the latter, who are usually employed in lower-paid activities.
There are also very marked differences between communities. Only in three of them are salaries above the national average – taking into account that the statistics do not include the Basque Country and Navarra, two rich territories with high per capita incomes. These are the Community of Madrid (30,769 euros) and Catalonia (26,806), two dynamic autonomies that benefit from agglomeration economies, and Asturias (24,581 euros), with a productive fabric that has more industrial presence than other areas of the country. . At the bottom are Andalusia (19,618) and Extremadura (18,344).
