Spain is the country with the seventh highest interprofessional minimum wage (SMI) in the European Union, according to data published this Friday by the European Statistical Office (Eurostat), which puts the minimum remuneration paid in Spain at 1,260 euros in 12 payments.. After the last increase agreed between the Government and unions in January of this year, the Iberian country has advanced one position in the European ranking, overtaking Slovenia.
The minimum wage in Spain currently stands at 1,080 euros in 14 payments, an amount that Eurostat adjusts every twelve months of the year to facilitate comparison with the rest of the community partners.. According to the data updated this Friday, Spain is among the eight European countries where this remuneration exceeds 1,000 euros per month, although it is only ahead of Slovenia, whose minimum wage is 1,203.36 euros per month.
The Spanish brand of 1,260 euros represents practically half of the minimum wage in Luxembourg, which reaches 2,508 euros and is the highest in the entire European Union. They are followed by those from Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and France, which range between 1,997 and 1,747 euros per month, all of them exceeding the barrier of 1,500 euros.. Therefore, the Spanish minimum wage is the seventh highest, a position that Spain maintains when measured in terms of purchasing power.
Spain's position in the European ranking does not usually vary much, although in recent years the Spanish minimum wage has grown more than in countries with higher salaries. According to Eurostat data, the Spanish amount has increased on average by around 5% per year in the last ten years, two percentage points above the advances registered in Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Belgium or Ireland. The highest average annual growth rate of the minimum wage between July 2013 and July 2023 has been registered in Romania (12.9%), where it barely exceeds 600 euros, and the lowest, in Malta (1.7%).
In Spain, the increases in the SMI have been especially concentrated in the last five years. Specifically, since 2018 the Government chaired by Pedro Sánchez has raised this remuneration by 47%, going from 736 to 1,080 euros per month in fourteen payments (401 more euros), under the commitment to reach 60% of the average salary. The Executive of Mariano Rajoy also raised it by 7% in 2017, although previously it had been practically stagnant for almost a decade.
The increases in the minimum wage undertaken in recent years have not been exclusive to Spain. Following the arrival of the pandemic, many community partners took similar steps. For example, in Germany the amount has increased by 27% compared to the second half of 2019, the same as in Portugal. In Belgium it has grown by 23% and in France, by 12.4%.
In Spain, growth has been 20% compared to 2019, after the last rise in January of this year. “I am very happy, not for the government, but for the workers. The Government of Spain fulfills one of its main commitments, which was to reach 60% of the average salary in the SMI”, said the Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz at the time.. According to the Annual Labor Cost Survey published this Friday by the National Institute of Statistics (INE), the annual gross salary currently stands at an average of 25,353 euros per year, that is, 1,811 euros per month, an amount on which the SMI represents 59.6%.
Faced with the increases in some countries, there are others in which there is no minimum wage, as is the case in Denmark, Italy, Australia, Finland and Sweden. There are 22 Member States that do have this tool, among which Bulgaria and Romania have the lowest amounts (399 and 604 euros per month, respectively).. Outside the EU, in the United States the minimum wage is close to 1,157 euros per month, 103 euros below the Spanish figure.
Eurostat also offers individual rankings of Member States based on the percentage of workers who earn the minimum wage in each country and the proportion of income that this amount represents compared to the median gross income.. However, the latest available data dates from 2018. Spain was then the country with the fewest workers earning a minimum wage (0.8% of the total) and the third where this remuneration represented a lower proportion of average family income (44%).