Average Spanish Wage
June 23rd, 2011
The National Statistics Institute, on behalf of the Ministry of Economy, said yesterday that the “most common wage” lies at “about 15,500 euros” per annum. This equates to around 1,000 euros a month.
The ’1,000 euro wage’ is a reality already recognised by government authorities, reports Cinco Dias. The Annual Wage Structure Survey, compiled by the National Institute of Statistics for the Ministry of Finance, acknowledged that “the most common salary (annual gross) was found to be around 15,500 euros.” This translates to around 1,000 euros per month in fourteen payments with the usual deductions.
It is not the first time that this type of data has appeared in this survey, although up until now other aspects have been highlighted such as pay structure, the wage gap between men and women or the average wage which, according to recent data available from this 2009 survey, amounted to 22,511.47 euros gross per year, substantially above the real average salary.
In fact, the data compilers themselves admit that this statistic is a figure that does not match the “average wage” cited above, nor the “median”, which divides the number of workers into two equal parts: those who have a higher wage, and those with lower earnings. According to the latter concept, the average pay rises to 18,817 euros gross per year.
As for the pay gap between men and women, the survey says the annual salary for women was 22% lower than for men in 2009. At this point the NSI technicians also point out that this difference is reduced if the results take into account gender difference for the same job, contract type, hours, occupation or age, for example.
That said, in order to demonstrate wage differentials based on gender, the statisticians have incorporated other parameters such as the percentage of women who had earned income at or below minimum wage level (SMI), which in 2009 accounted for 15.2%, versus 5.6% of men.
Along the same lines, if you take into account the highest salaries, 9.8% of men presented an income five times above the SMI, compared with 4.7% of women. Also, out of the total number of workers with low earnings (equivalent to two-thirds the average wage), six out of ten are women.
Another wage inequality this survey reveals refers to workers with permanent or temporary contracts. Permanent employees have salaries 6.5% higher than average, while the others receive salaries of 25.8% below the average wage.
According to regional analysis, salaries are highest in the País Vasco (26,162.45 euros per year per worker), the Comunidad de Madrid (25,860 euros) and Cataluña (23,851 euros). These three communities, together with Navarra and Asturias, have average earnings above the national average wage. The rest of the autonomous regions are lower, and the lowest in the regional rankings are Canary Islands (18,926 euros per year), Extremadura (19,099 euros) and Galicia (19,806 euros).
