The agreements begin the yr with a wage enhance of two.9%, the bottom in two years | Economy | EUROtoday

The yr has begun with 6.3 million staff with their working circumstances already agreed for 2026. Among these circumstances is an agreed common wage enhance of two.87% based on the statistics of collective agreements registered till final January and printed this Tuesday by the Ministry of Labor. The wage enhance is the bottom in nearly two years (in February 2024 it was 2.85%).

The enhance in settlement salaries with which the yr started is nearly half a proportion level above the January CPI, based on the advance information supplied by the INE final week. This implies that greater than six million staff can be gaining, on common, 5 tenths of buying energy.

The wage enhance had been above 3% for 17 consecutive months, since August 2024. And it closed final yr, as soon as the revisions to the wage assure clauses have been utilized, with a rise in salaries agreed within the settlement of three.56%. In this manner, bearing in mind that common costs rose on common by 2.67% in 2025, this represented a mean acquire of just about one level of buying energy.

The moderation of inflation, a development that can proceed based on all forecasts, explains why wage negotiations are much less cumbersome than earlier than. According to January figures, firm agreements, which final month affected simply over 135,000 staff with present agreements from earlier years, have been probably the most conservative, with an agreed pay enhance of two.25%. On the opposite hand, for the 5.8 million workers with reference sector agreements the rise was 2.9%.

There has additionally been much less progress within the salaries agreed upon within the 5 agreements which have been signed in January and that have an effect on greater than 26,000 staff, who will obtain a rise of three.2% in comparison with the will increase of near 4% within the newly signed agreements of 2025.

The sector that maintains the very best wage enhance (3.7%) is the one which teams the class different companieswhich incorporates, amongst many different actions, associations, political events, laundries, all sorts of repairs or hairdressers. At 3% or barely above are the greater than 600,000 hospitality staff who have already got their circumstances agreed for this yr (3.3%); or the practically 400,000 within the transportation and storage sector and one other 462,000 in administrative actions (3.1% in each instances).

These will increase above the typical happen not solely because of the union’s experience in negotiating the settlement, but in addition as a result of they’re sectors that pay worse salaries, whose enhance is marked within the lowest wage bands by the will increase within the interprofessional minimal wage.

Last yr, the settlement negotiators complied, as a common rule, with the suggestions of the agreements included within the Agreement for Employment and Collective Bargaining (AENC), which expired in December. At the second, not solely has this settlement not been renewed, however there should not even deliberate conferences of employers and unions to reissue it, so the negotiations are going down with none sort of steering from the management of the social companions.