ECB Wage Tracker Points to Ongoing Easing of Wage Pressures

30 July 2025

ECB Wage Tracker Points to Ongoing Easing of Wage Pressures
Photo of the Illumination of the ECB Building for the Europe Day 2025 in Frankfurt on May 8, 2025. Photo by the ECB.

By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – The European Central Bank’s wage tracker shows wage pressures in the euro area continuing to ease, the ECB said Wednesday.

‘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 ECB said in a press release.

The ECB cautioned that revisions are possible and that indications with respect to future developments ‘should not be interpreted as a forecast’, given that these are based solely on information available for active collective bargaining agreements.

The June macroeconomic projections include a better assessment of wage developments, the ECB said. These called for annual compensation per employee growth of 3.2% in 2025 and 2.8% in 2026.