Spanish wages on the rise as economic recovery blooms

With the sharpest increase in real wages for more than 15 years, Spaniards now have more cash in their pockets than this time last year.

New data from Spain’s Institute of National Statistics (INE) has revealed that the average Spanish worker enjoyed nearly a 2% pay increase in 2015 – the first such nationwide rise for more than a decade.

The INE stats showed that, in the fourth quarter of last year, the average gross salary in Spain stood at €2,026.14 per month, which represented a 1.7% increase on the same period in 2014…

That increase was the sharpest rise in real wages recorded in Spain since 2000, when the statistic was first reported on an annual basis. Allied to a period of negative inflation, which served to push the consumer price index down by 0.8%, this meant that the average Spanish worker boosted their spending power by more than 2%.

By region, wages in Madrid are, on average, the highest nationwide at €2,422.79 per month, followed by the Basque Country at €2,386.82 per month and Catalonia at €2,136.56. Meanwhile, the Valencia region continued to offer the lowest average wage in Spain, at €1,761.71 gross per month.

In terms of percentage increase, wages in the Canaries rose the highest at 4.6% (reaching €1,708.63 per month), followed by the Castilla y Leon region (2.7%).

The Bank of Spain also confirmed at the end of last week that the country’s debt ratio dipped below 99% in the final quarter of 2015, which was a positive step along the government’s goal to reduce public borrowing per head. The average debt load per head nationwide is still high, but the government has said that it expects this ratio to fall further in 2016.