# Salaries in Spain



## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

In Spanish
El salario por hora en España se aleja de la media de la zona euro | Economía | EL PAÃ�S

In English
Spanish hourly wages fall further from euro-zone average | In English | EL PAÃ�S



> In 2014, Spanish workers were making an average hourly rate of €15.70, or* 27.3 percent less* than the €21.60 average in the group of countries with the common currency.
> Seven years earlier, in 2008 – when the economic crisis began – that difference was *24.3 percent,* according to an analysis of companies with 10 or more workers conducted by Eurostat, the European statistics bureau.
> 
> Salaries here have never been high, but now you get even less. Of course this would have to be contrasted with cost of living stats too


And this quote bears out what I have said in many other threads. 
There is more work around.
Conditions in many cases are worse than pre crisis.


> Reducing labor costs as a way to improve competitiveness has been one of the goals of Spain’s current conservative Popular Party government, and many reforms have been aimed in that direction.


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## Lynn R (Feb 21, 2014)

Pesky Wesky said:


> And this quote bears out what I have said in many other threads.
> There is more work around.
> Conditions in many cases are worse than pre crisis.


I've no doubt at all that's true. It's also something that could be said of many countries, emerging from the global recession. Governments and employers have seized with glee the opportunity to drive down wages and worsen conditions, on the basis that "if you don't want the job, there are thousands more who do".


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## Chopera (Apr 22, 2013)

Lynn R said:


> I've no doubt at all that's true. It's also something that could be said of many countries, emerging from the global recession. Governments and employers have seized with glee the opportunity to drive down wages and worsen conditions, on the basis that "if you don't want the job, there are thousands more who do".


This might sound a bit radical, but maybe in recessions governments and compnies simply can't afford to pay higher wages?


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## Horlics (Sep 27, 2011)

Chopera said:


> This might sound a bit radical, but maybe in recessions governments and compnies simply can't afford to pay higher wages?


Indeed.

And also, consulting companies have had to watch talent leave because they weren't able to meet salary expectations due to their public sector contracts paying less or being terminated. It's not always done with glee.

The same is said of Britain at the moment, lots of talk about zero hours contracts, labour exploitation and not paying the minimum wage, and a whole sector of the economy stuck on very low wages. And at the same time there are professionals making wages that some people think of as telephone numbers. It's the same everywhere.

That said, I do agree with the view that the rich like to keep the poor poor. But that's a different debate.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

Chopera said:


> This might sound a bit radical, but maybe in recessions governments and companies simply can't afford to pay higher wages?


Two points to add
Firstly, "conditions" doesn't just refer to salaries.
Secondly, it may well be true, after all OH's salary was frozen and then reduced twice by the government (I believe some of it has been paid back now). He's a teacher. However, that must be recognised in some way by the PP. Yes, there are more contracts. Unfortunately pay and conditions are not, for the moment, up to pre recession levels.


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## Madliz (Feb 4, 2011)

Another article on the same theme:

El espaÃ±ol ha perdido un 25% de su salario real desde 2007, mientras el alemÃ¡n ha ganado un 5% â€” idealista/news

Spanish salaries down 25% since 2007, UK salaries down 7·5%, US and German salaries up 5%.


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## Isobella (Oct 16, 2014)

Horlics said:


> Indeed.
> 
> And also, consulting companies have had to watch talent leave because they weren't able to meet salary expectations due to their public sector contracts paying less or being terminated. It's not always done with glee.
> 
> ...


Just catching up with the Sunday supplements. An article claims that part time jobs and zero hours in the UK are a myth. It says full time jobs account for three quarters of increased employment since 2009 and there are fewer than 700,000 people on zero hours out of a workforce of 31 million, just 2%.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Discussions on wages should really be linked to productivity. No business can afford to increase wages if productivity is stagnant or falls unless it puts up prices and risks losing customers which is not always a sensible thing to do.

In the boom years in Spain, Spanish wage increase rates exceeded those of Germany. Yet Spanish productivity was below that of Germany.

Anyone who has run a business -or a local government - will know that very many factors come into play when deciding wage levels. It's not a simple matter of taking from profit, something which many on the Left seem to believe is the case.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Another factor relevant to the Eurozone and thus Spain is that as member states can't devalue their currencies the only way their exports can compete price-wise is to cut production costs....which means in practice fewer employees working longer hours at lower wage rates.


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## Pesky Wesky (May 10, 2009)

mrypg9 said:


> Anyone who has run a business -or a local government - will know that very many factors come into play when deciding wage levels. It's not a simple matter of taking from profit, something which many on the Left seem to believe is the case.


I don't think you need to have run a business, or be part of local government to know this. Nor does political standing have anything to do with comprehension of salary levels.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

Pesky Wesky said:


> I don't think you need to have run a business, or be part of local government to know this. Nor does political standing have anything to do with comprehension of salary levels.


Experience teaches otherwise.

People with responsibility for handling public money frequently do so in a way they would never do were it their own.


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## mrypg9 (Apr 26, 2008)

I remember way back at the tail end of the Callaghan Government in the UK, just before Thatcher swept to power....my first year or so in teaching.
Our local authority was cash-strapped and unable to meet its payrolls...so it pushed through a supplementary rate increase. That's what councils could do in those days.
Very few businesses can do that.
I've spent most of my working life on the public payroll, salary paid thanks to the tax and rate payer. Because of OH's business I was able to see how the revenue was generated to help pay the salaries of myself and other local and national government employees.
The sad fact is that too many people in government at all levels have limited experience of only one aspect of commercial life.
Labour people all too often in public sector jobs, Tories with limited or zero understanding of the public sector. Both with scant understanding of each other.


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