Aline Schuiling, senior economist at ABN AMRO, points out that Eurozone’s wage growth has picked up since the start of 2018, in spite of the fact that there is still slack in the labour market.
Key Quotes
“Compensation per employee rose by 2.5% yoy in 2018Q3, up from 1.9% in 2017Q4. Considering that real wages contracted in 2017 due to an unexpectedly sharp rise in the headline inflation rate on the back of higher energy prices, we think that the pick-up in nominal wage growth since the start of 2018 merely was compensation for this.”
“Consequently, we expect nominal wage growth to decline somewhat in 2019. Nevertheless, it should remain higher than the inflation rate. An early indicator for somewhat slower wage growth seems to be that growth in negotiated wages (which according to comments made by ECB President Mario Draghi is the ECB’s preferred measure of wage growth) edged lower from 2.2% in 2018Q2 to 2.1% in 2018Q3.”
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