The containment of wages to consolidate the benefits of economic recovery without losing productivity has been applied with different yardsticks in Spanish companies.
With the differences that each company faces every day with its business, the general trend is that while the salaries of executives and middle managers maintain a positive difference today (+ 2.5% and 2.6%, respectively) in Compared with what they received on their payrolls last year, those of employees remain practically flat, growing just one tenth of a percentage point in the last 11 years and staying below accumulated inflation, according to a study by the Eada business school carried out together with the ICSA group, based on surveys of more than 80,000 Spanish wage earners.
Translated into euros, the average salary of a manager in Spain grew by 1,962 euros in 2018, to 81,059 euros, while that of an intermediate manager earned 1,072 euros, up to 41,507 euros. The employees without the previous responsibilities saw in their payrolls an increase of 26 euros, up to 22,819 euros.
With these data, to date, the basic category of the Spanish companies has less purchasing power than 11 years ago, when the outbreak of the great economic crisis resulted in a massive restructuring of the workforce and a subsequent devaluation Salary also widespread.
What the study shows is that, in general, the evolution of payrolls since the beginning of the crisis has taken a similar course, with significant devaluations in 2010, 2012 and 2013. Afterwards, the recovery has been contained, although within that containment there are big differences: the managers have raised their salaries up to eight times more than the employees (2454 against 310 in absolute terms).
Thus, with the stagnation of salaries in the lower categories in the last year, cumulative inflation (16.8% since 2007) exceeds the evolution of payroll of employees (16.5%). From this point of view of the evolution of purchasing power, the middle managers are those who have benefited most since 2016.
By autonomous communities, Navarra leads the salaries of the highest employees, with an average salary of 25,967 euros, followed by Madrid, Catalonia, the Basque Country and Asturias, while La Rioja and Extremadura are the autonomous regions with the lowest salaries, of 19,233 and 18,884. euros, respectively.
As for the salaries of managers, Madrid and Catalonia top the list, with salaries of 82,310 and 85,347 euros per year, respectively, and in the intermediate command positions, the highest salaries are also located in Madrid, with 43,703 euros, and in Catalonia, with 42,148. The sector of banking and insurance is the best paid, with salaries of up to 91,071 euros for managers and 26,395 for workers, while the lowest salaries correspond to the tourism and commercial sector, with salaries of 18,583 euros for the employee .
