The data suggests that salaries have increased in 2025 compared to 2024, largely driven by staff shortages and the imposition of a minimum wage that has raised salaries lower.
However, these global figures hide important differences depending on age and type of contract, with young people being the ones who suffer the most. economic difficulties. Despite this general improvement, almost two million workers earn less than 1,070 euros per month, a figure that shows that the salary insecurity continues to be present in a considerable sector of the population.
Salaries are rising, but not all the same. Data from the 2024 Labor Force Survey (EPA) that have just been publishedreveal that in Spain the average salary has experienced some changes in recent years, reaching an average of 2,385.6 euros gross per month in 2024, which represents an increase of 113 euros compared to 2,273 euros in 2023.
According to INE data, the average salary rose by 5%, increasing to 110 euros more per month, while the median salary stood at 2,001.4 euros, which represents an increase of 65.9 euros per month (3.4%). This increase in salaries even exceeds the inflation rate, which was 3%, and reflects the highest increase recorded since 2006, when these data began to be collected.
Young people: hopefully mileurista. However, this increase is not transferred to the same extent to the salaries of young people who have just entered the labor market. For the first time since 2016, the average salary of young people between 16 and 24 years old has been reduced by 14.6 euros per month compared to the average salary in 2023. This leaves young people with an average annual salary of 16,700 euros gross, which is equivalent to the Minimum Interprofessional Wage.
According to the INE, those under 24 years of age earn an average of 1,372 euros gross per month, which represents a decrease compared to 2023 and a real loss in purchasing power. This situation is worrying because it accentuates the historical gap with respect to the generation of more experienced workers, whose average salary exceeds 2,680 euros. This difference generates a intergenerational wage gap of more than 40%, a figure that confirms the difficulties for young people to achieve economic stability comparable to that of their elders.
Stable and precarious work. The data show that the wage gap among different age groups has been expanding in recent years. In 2024, the amount of average salaries will almost double among young people who have just entered the labor market, with the aforementioned 1,372 euros gross per month, and those who face the final stretch of their professional career with an average salary of 2,680.7 euros gross per month.
The INE explains this difference by highlighting that many young people are in a situation of multiple employment or with temporary contracts, seeking to combine several jobs to be able to make ends meet. For their part, workers with more experience “have a greater relative weight in the highest salaries, since they have a greater proportion of indefinite contracts, greater seniority and more work experience.”
30% collect the SMI. The rise in the SMI has pushed up the lowest salaries creating a greater mass of active population concentrated in the range of 16,600 euros. Specifically, some 5.5 million workers (30% of the total) earn salaries below 1,582.2 gross euros per month. Among them, 1.84 million receive 1,068 euros gross per month for having part-time contracts in their main job.
It is not all bad news, 40% of employees (about 7,375,900 people) earn between 1,582 and 2,659 euros. The remaining 30%, some 5,531,900 employees, are in the three highest deciles, with gross monthly salaries of 2,659.8 or more euros.
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