New data release: ECB wage tracker continues to show easing wage pressures

30 July 2025

• ECB wage tracker updated with agreements signed up to end of June 2025
• ECB wage tracker expanded to include information on wage agreements in Belgium; forward-looking horizon extended to end of March 2026
• Forward-looking information continues to indicate the easing of negotiated wage growth, consistent with data published following June 2025 Governing Council meeting

The European Central Bank (ECB) wage tracker, which only covers active collective bargaining agreements, indicates negotiated wage growth with smoothed one-off payments of 4.6% in 2024 (based on an average coverage of 49.6% of employees in participating countries) and 3.2% in 2025 (based on an average coverage of 47.0%). The ECB wage tracker with unsmoothed one-off payments indicates an average negotiated wage growth level of 4.8% in 2024 and 2.9% in 2025. The downward dynamics of the forward-looking wage tracker partly reflect the mechanical impact of large one-off payments (that were paid in 2024 but drop out in 2025) and the frontloaded nature of wage increases in some sectors in 2024. The wage tracker excluding one-off payments indicates growth of 4.1% in 2024 and 3.8% in 2025.

For the first quarter of 2026, the headline ECB wage tracker is at 1.7% (down from 1.8% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 4.6% in the first quarter of 2025), the ECB wage tracker with unsmoothed one-off payments is at 2.5% (down from 3.0% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and at the same level as in the first quarter of 2025), and the ECB wage tracker excluding one-off payments is at 2.6% (down from 3.1% in the fourth quarter of 2025 and 4.4% in the first quarter of 2025). The employee coverage in the first quarter of 2026 is at 32.5% (decreasing from 45.3% in the previous quarter). The signals from the ECB wage tracker for the first quarter of 2026 are expected to become more complete as new wage agreements are signed. See Chart 1 and Table 1 for further details.

Since the previous data release in June 2025, the ECB wage tracker has been expanded to include collective agreements in Belgium (retroactively from January 2021 onwards). The forward-looking horizon has also been extended to the end of March 2026.

Overall, the ECB wage tracker may be subject to revisions, and the forward-looking part should not be interpreted as a forecast, as it only captures the information that is available for the active collective bargaining agreements. Moreover, the ECB wage tracker does not track the indicator of negotiated wage growth precisely and deviations are to be expected over time. For a more comprehensive assessment of wage developments in the euro area, please refer to the June 2025 Eurosystem staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area, which indicate a yearly growth rate of compensation per employee in the euro area of 3.2% in 2025 and 2.8% in 2026.

The ECB publishes four wage tracker indicators for the aggregate of eight participating euro area countries on the ECB Data Portal.

Chart 1

ECB wage tracker: forward-looking signals for negotiated wages and revisions to previous data release

Indicators between January 2024 and March 2026	Revisions to previous data release
(left-hand scale: yearly growth rates, percentages; right-hand scale: percentage share of employees)	(percentage points)

• The headline ECB wage tracker is a tracker of negotiated wage growth that includes collectively agreed one-off payments, such as those related to inflation compensation, bonuses or back-dated pay, which are smoothed over 12 months.
• The ECB wage tracker excluding one-off payments reflects the extent of structural (or permanent) negotiated wage increases.
• The ECB wage tracker with unsmoothed one-off payments is constructed using a methodology that, in terms of both data sources and statistical methodology, is conceptually similar to, but not necessarily the same as, that used for the ECB indicator of negotiated wage growth.
• The share of employees covered is the percentage of employees across the participating countries that are directly covered by ECB wage tracker data. This indicator provides information on the representativeness of the underlying (negotiated) wage growth signals obtained from the set of wage tracker indicators for the aggregate of the participating countries. Employee coverage differs across countries and within each country over time (more details are provided in Table 2).

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Notes:

• The ECB wage tracker is the result of a Eurosystem partnership currently comprising the European Central Bank and eight euro area national central banks: the Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Bank of Greece, the Banco de España, the Banque de France, the Banca d’Italia, De Nederlandsche Bank and the Oesterreichische Nationalbank. It is based on a highly granular database of active collective bargaining agreements for Belgium, Germany, Greece, Spain, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Austria. The wage tracker is one of many possible sources that can help assess wage pressures in the euro area.
• The wage tracker methodology uses a double aggregation approach. First, it aggregates the highly granular information on collective bargaining agreements and constructs the wage tracker indicators at the country-level using information on the employee coverage for each country. Second, it uses this information to construct the aggregate for the euro area using time-varying weights based on the total compensation of employees among the participating countries.
• Given that the forward-looking nature of the tracker is dependent on the underlying collective bargaining agreements database, the wage signals should always be considered conditional on the information available at any given point in time and thus subject to revisions.
• The results in this press release do not represent the views of the ECB’s decision-making bodies.