Spain concluded a 2024 of economic strength on Tuesday. The country has led growth among rich countries and has even managed to recover some of the ground lost to inflation. Although this has not been the case for everyone. Salaried workers have been able to take a bite out of prices after a year of salary revaluations that have beaten inflation. As has happened since 2021, pensioners have also been unscathed by the rise in prices and the most humble have gained purchasing power. In this context, The big losers in 2024 have once again been the officials.
The salary increase agreed by the Government and the unions this 2024 (2.5%) has remained, once again, below the Consumer Price Index (CPI)which closed the year with an increase of 2.8%. In fact, public employees will still have to wait for the Government to approve the pending 0.5% increase in the Council of Ministers.
The three-year agreement that the unions signed with the Government in 2022 has caused public employees have lost purchasing power in the three years it has been in effect. While the price increases recorded in 2022, 2023 and 2024 add up to almost 15 points, The agreed salary increase for this group has remained at 9.8 points in that same period. In the case of public employees, it rains in the wet. During the great recession and subsequent recovery, this sector saw its salaries frozen for several years and even suffered payroll cuts.
Once the salary pact has been exhausted, unions and the Government have begun contacts to negotiate a new framework of remuneration improvements for the coming years. CSIF demands from the Executive an agreement that allows the purchasing power lost by this group to be recovered in recent years. A sector in which, it is also true, salaries are higher on average than in private activities.
Private salaries take a bite out of the CPI
2024 has generally concluded with good news for the rest of the country’s income. Private sector employees (about 15.1 million people) They have managed to gain some of the ground lost to inflation. Although the data is not yet definitive, both the salary increases negotiated by agreement and the salaries themselves (measured from the perspective of the companies’ salary costs) have beaten prices.
Specifically, The agreed remuneration increases were 3.1% on averagea figure that is even higher (3.8%) in the agreements signed last year. Regarding salary costs, INE data reflect an average year-on-year increase of 4.1% in the third quarter of last year, a figure similar to that recorded in the statistics of average Social Security contribution bases. At the sector level, professional, scientific and technical activities (6.3%); Health and social services (6.2%) and artistic, recreational and entertainment activities (5.5%) registered the greatest increases.
Within salaried Spain, it is still pending to know how much the interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) rises, an income earned by between 2.3 and 2.5 million people in the country. The Ministry of Labor still has to negotiate this point with unions and employers, but has guaranteed that the rise will beat, at the very least, inflation.
Pensions remain protected
After employees, the second most important income group in Spain are pensioners, who will once again see their benefits revalued at the same rate as inflation. Next year there will be 11 million pensioners of the contributory system and Passive Classes who will see their monthly payment increase by 2.8%.
In some cases, the increases will be higher. For example, the 2.1 million pensioners who receive the minimum benefit will see their income revalued by 6%, an increase that can reach 9% when there is a spouse in charge or a widow with family responsibilities.
The non-contributory pensionswhich about 450,000 people in Spain receive, They will also revalue by 9% just like him minimum vital income (MIV), a benefit that reaches, including the childhood supplement, some two million Spaniards.
But within the subsidy system, the greatest increase in value goes to the 250,000 unemployed workers who receive unemployment benefits other than those over 52 years of age. In these cases, after the reform approved by the Government last year, during the first year of benefit they will receive almost 16% more than in 2023. The cross within this group are the unemployed with subsidy over 52 years of age.whose monthly aid is linked to the Iprem, which in 2024 has also remained frozen.
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