Adjusted for inflation, the average wage is 3.7% below 2008 and the minimum wage 43.9% above

Wages and the minimum wage, which the government sets each year by royal decree, are two of the economic issues going into the 29 November election. INE data shows how they have changed since 2008 once inflation is stripped out.

The average wage per worker goes from 1,800 euros a month in 2008 to 2,377 in 2025, with extra payments spread over twelve months: 32.0% more. Prices rise 37.1% over that time. Adjusted for inflation, the average wage in 2025 is 3.7% lower than in 2008. The lowest point in the series is 2022, when prices rose faster than wages, and since 2012 it has not returned to its 2008 level.

The minimum wage follows another path. In twelve payments, it goes from 700 euros in 2008 to 1,381 in 2025, 97.3% more; adjusted for inflation, 43.9%. The largest rise was in 2019, 22.2%. In 2026 it is 1,221 euros in fourteen payments, under Royal Decree 126/2026.

The result is that the minimum wage is closing in on the average: it was 38.9% of the average wage in 2008 and 58.1% in 2025.

A word of warning about averages. The average wage also changes with who is working: when mostly low-wage jobs are lost, as in the crisis that began in 2008, the average rises even if no wage does. So the real fall since 2008 does not mean that each worker earns 3.7% less today. The effects of the minimum wage on employment are outside the scope of this note.

See also: Jobs: the labour reform, three years on

Read the full theme: Jobs: the labour reform, three years on