Europäischer Tarifbericht des WSI – 2022 / 2023 : Inflationsschock lässt Reallöhne europaweit einbrechen

The economic framework for collective bargaining in the European Union is currently characterized by the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the energy crisis and rapidly increasing consumer prices. As a result, the purchasing power of wages in the EU-27 fell by 4.0 % last year ; for 2023, the European Commission forecasts a further drop in real wages of 0.7 %. Because import prices are now receding, the persistence of inflation is mainly due to domestic factors. The data show that the development of negotiated wages cannot explain the high inflation rates of the past few months. With nominal growth of 2.8 % in 2022, they continued to move within the framework consistent with stability. This is in contrast to the expansion of profit margins, which is a major contributor to domestic inflation and makes companies the winners of inflation. In the midst of the crisis, there is a problematic redistribution away from wages and in favour of capital income. Europe’s trade unions have recently reacted to this with higher wage settlements. The currently elevated profit margins provide a buffer to absorb increases in unit labour costs. A normalization of profit margins is a possible way to overcome the problem of high inflation, falling real wages and shifts in the functional income distribution.