Pay and prices
A new report by the European Trade Union Institute, has found that pay in the EU was still lagging behind prices in 2023.
The report, Benchmarking working Europe 2024, calculates that, after taking inflation into account, pay fell by 0.7% in 2023, after a 4.3% fall in 2022. Profits, on the other hand, increased in real terms.
The largest falls in real pay were in Hungary and the Czech Republic, both down 3.8%; Italy, down 2.6%; and Sweden, down 2.3%.