Costa Tropical Internet

The average salary in Spain is 34% lower than in the rest of the EU according to a study published today by Adecco and IESE with reference to figures taken from 2006.

The report shows that the average gross salary in the EU was 32,414 euros while in Spain it was 21,402 euros. Furthermore, it shows that in countries like Denmark, the UK or Germany that the average salary was over 40,000 euros a year compared to the average salary in Eastern European countries where it didn’t reach 10,000 euros.

How does Spain compare?

Furthermore, the study underlined the fact that the difference between Spain and the rest of the EU has been increasing over recent years. Between 2002 and 2006 the average salary in the EU increased in real terms by 3.9% while in Spain it only went up by 1.3%.

However, Spain did come out better with respect to the difference in salaries between men and women. On average in the EU men earn 15% more than women while in Spain this difference is just 13%.

By sectors the highest average salaries are found in the banking, insurance and finance sectors at around 50,186 euros a year (gross) compared to the hotel and restaurant sector where the average salary was found to be 21,461 euros. Spain shows the same tendency with average salaries in the finance sector at 40,012 euros and average salaries in the hotel sector at 15,164 euros.

The study also shows that while Spain created 90% of the employment generated in the EU in 2003 this figure now stands at just 3% which in real terms means that the rate of creating new jobs on a year to year basis stands at 0.3%. This not enough to cover the increase in the active population (3.1%) which has resulted in unemployment going up by 35.3% - the biggest increase out of all the countries analyzed in the study.

Moreover, the study forecasts that Spain will continue to have the highest inter-annual increases in its unemployment rate. It predicts that in December unemployment will have gone up by 34.2% compared to the same time last year and there will be a total of 2,586,000 unemployed.

The unemployment rate in Spain is also the highest out the rest of the EU and the study predicts that the unemployment rate in Spain will be around 11.2% by the end of the year.

The slowdown in the creation of new jobs is mostly in male dominated jobs. In fact men have seen their access to employment go down by a third compared to this time last year (from 1.9% to 0.6% in the second quarter of 2008). On the other hand, female job occupation has gone up at a similar rate compared to last year (from 2% to 2.1%).