Salaries grew more than prices in 2024: while inflation averaged 2.8%, salaries increased by 5%, to 2,386 gross euros per month. This represents more than two points of gain in purchasing power, according to salary statistics, distributed this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics. It is a vigorous increase, but not as much as the one that occurred in 2023 according to the same registry, 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).
The advances of the last two years mitigate the inflationary blow of 2022, at the very beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, when prices grew by 8.4% and salaries only 2%. Then purchasing power dropped 6.4 points, which added to the 1.2 lost in 2021, when prices were stressed due to the supply crisis. The gain in 2023 and 2024 compared to the loss in 2021 and 2022 leaves a purchasing power contraction of 1.7 points. But this obviates a broader view, since in previous years salaries did advance somewhat more than prices.
These results are consistent with those issued by various recent studies, which point to a stagnation of purchasing power in Spain in recent years. “Since 2007, real wages measured by the wage have remained practically stagnant, and have even decreased in certain periods,” underlined a recent analysis that elaborated on this issue.
This Fedea study, as is also evident from these EPA data, warns that in recent years there has been a greater increase in the lowest salaries and a more moderate increase in intermediate salaries. The 2024 EPA figures show that compared to 2023, the lowest deciles (a tenth of the employees, ordered into ten groups from lowest to highest and for which their average remuneration is calculated) increased their average remuneration by 10.1%, compared to an increase of 3% in the fifth decile and 6.6% in the tenth, the highest earners. If we broaden our view, since 2018 (when Pedro Sánchez came to power and since then the minimum wage has grown), the first decile has grown by 48%, the fifth by 22.1% and the tenth by 19.6%.
More increase in EPA than in agreements
It should be noted that these data from the EPA contrast with another key salary statistic, which measures the evolution of the remunerations agreed upon in the agreement (and which is updated month by month). This registry advanced 3.4% last year (1.6 points less than the INE registry) and 3.7% in 2023 (3.6 less than the EPA).
This means that average salaries grow more than what appears from the agreement tables, which according to experts is due to several reasons. The office of the Deputy Secretary General of Union Policy of UGT explains that the EPA “reflects effective salaries received by workers, including fixed and variable components (bonuses, overtime, incentives).” “Therefore,” they add from the union, “its evolution is conditioned by the occupational and sectoral structure of employment.”
“On the contrary, the statistics of salary increases agreed in collective agreements come from the administrative record of collective bargaining, which includes nominal salaries agreed in tables and their revisions. This is a normative indicator, not effective perception, and is limited to workers covered by agreements” indicate from UGT.
Thus, the statistics on agreements reflect how much the agreed tables grow, but not the salaries as a whole. Luis Zarapuz, coordinator of the Confederal Economic Cabinet of CC OO, highlights the “decoupling” between both registers in recent years. In addition to the technical aspects that stand out from 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 less added value and ) and the restriction on 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 agreement tables.
Other salary statistics, such as that of , have also been recording salary increases higher than those agreed in the agreement.
2,386 euros on average
Beyond the relative figures, INE statistics indicate that the average gross salary in Spain last year was 2,386 euros gross per month, with an increase of 113 euros compared to 2023. The median salary (which, ordering all individuals from lowest to 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 reflected in the press release, men had “a greater relative concentration in high salaries than women”: 34% earned 2,660 euros or more, compared to 26% of women. At the same time, the opposite happened in low salaries: 40% of them had a salary of less than 1,582 euros, compared to 21% of men. The average salary for women was 2,163 euros per month and that of men was 2,593.
There are also large differences by age (those under 25 years of age earn 1,373 euros on average and those over 55, 2,681), by level of training (50% of employees with a higher degree earned 2,660 euros or more, compared to 9% with low education) and by size of the workplace (in those with up to nine employees, 54% earn less than 1,583 euros, almost the same proportion as 2,660 euros or more for staff with more than 250 members). By nationality, Spaniards earn an average of 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).
