• 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

Sources: ECB calculations based on data provided by the Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique, the Belgian Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue, the Belgian National Social Security Office, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Bank of Greece, the Banco de España, the Banque de France, the Banca d’Italia, the Dutch employers’ association AWVN, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and Eurostat. The indicator of negotiated wage growth is calculated using data from the Belgian Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Ministerio de Empleo y Seguridad Social, the Banque de France, the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT), the Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek, Statistik Austria, Haver Analytics and Eurostat.
Notes: Dashed lines denote forward-looking information. The latest observations are for March 2026 for the ECB wage tracker indicators (left panel), May 2025 for the indicator of negotiated wage growth (left panel) and December 2025 for the revisions to the previous data release (right panel).

What do the four different indicators show?

• 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).

Table 1
ECB wage tracker summary

(percentages)

Sources: ECB calculations based on data provided by the Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique, the Belgian Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue, the Belgian National Social Security Office, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Bank of Greece, the Banco de España, the Banque de France, the Banca d’Italia, the Dutch employers’ association AWVN, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and Eurostat.
Notes: ECB wage tracker indicators reflect yearly growth in negotiated wages as a percentage. Coverage is defined as the share of employees in participating countries as a percentage. Rows with values in italics and bold refer to the forward-looking aspect of the respective indicators. Data are subject to revisions.

Table 2
Employee coverage by country

(share of employees in each country, percentages)

Sources: ECB, the Nationale Bank van België/Banque Nationale de Belgique, the Belgian Federal Public Service Employment, Labour and Social Dialogue, the Belgian National Social Security Office, the Deutsche Bundesbank, the Bank of Greece, the Banco de España, the Banque de France, the Banca d’Italia, the Dutch employers’ association AWVN, the Oesterreichische Nationalbank and Eurostat.
Notes: The euro area aggregate comprises the eight participating wage tracker countries. The coverage shows the relative strength of wage signals for each country and the euro area. The historical average is calculated starting from January 2021 for Belgium, January 2016 for Greece and February 2020 for Austria. For the other countries, it is calculated from January 2013 to December 2024. Rows with values in italics and bold refer to the forward-looking aspect of the respective indicators. Data are subject to revisions.

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.