Employment grows at the expense of lower wages

Employment grew, but at the expense of lower wages, with average salaries declining 0.6% and 0.1%.

Average usual wages fell in the third quarter in two of the sectors with the biggest job gains compared to the previous year: in very large companies, which have accounted for 42% of jobs added to the economy since the end of the summer of last year; And in the public sector, which arrived at the end of last September with more than 722,000 workers.

Average wage data, released yesterday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), indicates that a large portion of jobs created after the most severe phase of the pandemic will offer lower wages.

In fact, in companies with more than 500 workers, there were not many jobs. Based on the announced salaries of Social Security and Caixa Geral de Aposentações, the National Statistics Institute had 1.17 million workers, the maximum of the series that began in 2014. There, compared to September 2020, more than 55.3 thousand in a single growth of 5%. Moreover, the largest among companies of different sizes.

On the other hand, the value of the normal average salary, year on year, decreased by 0.6%, falling from 1,300 to 1,293 euros in total. Here, it is the salary that usually appears on the monthly salary receipt, including base salary and components such as meal support, but not Holiday Aid or Christmas Benefit, and thus has a lower seasonal behavior.

big part

However, in companies of other dimensions there are positive differences in the average normal salary, from 1.9% to 5.6%, and the highest percentage occurs in small enterprises, where the number of employees varies from one to four workers.

The decrease in the average salary in large companies also affects the base salary, which decreases by 0.1% to 1,171 euros total. As for the gross salary (which includes seasonal subsidies) there is still a small gain of 0.4% to 474 euros.

In public jobs also, there is a fall in the average usual wage accompanied by the growth of employment. Public administrations for the quarter ending in September amounted to 722.3 thousand workers, an increase of 15.4 thousand over the same period in 2020 (+2.2%). The average regular salary decreased slightly (-0.1%) to a total of €1,580.

In the public sector base salary and gross salary averages, there is, however, a small gain, at 0.4% in both cases. Much less profits than those that occur in the private sector. Here, the usual average salary grew 3% last quarter to €1007 gross. The basic salary rose by 2.9% to 945 euros, and the gross salary by 3.4% to 1,221 euros.

Overall, the average regular salary was €1,104, up 2.6% from the previous year, but with slower growth compared to previous months.