Compensation Per Employee Accelerates Above ECB Forecasts In Q1

Eurozone Q1 compensation per employee was 5.1% Y/Y, above Q4's 4.7% and the ECB's forecast of 5.0%.

• The 5.0% Y/Y compensation per employee forecast noted above is taken from the latest Eurosystem projections here.
• In yesterday's press conference, Lagarde noted that "If you look at compensation per employee based on what we can calculate on the basis of 15 countries, it was 4.7%."
• The 5.0% Y/Y figure is from Eurosystem (i.e National Central Bank) forecasts, while Lagarde likely quoted forecasts made by ECB staff. This may explain some portion of the discrepancy. There may also have been different cut-off dates/data used to compute the two forecasts.
• Additionally, Lagarde was asked about whether the ECB would only make decisions in forecast meetings (so this bit isn't explicitly on wages), but she said: "Regarding your first question, first of all, those are not our projections. Those are the projections of staff. And it’s obvious that projections produced by staff on a regular basis are very informative, go deep into the data that we receive, analyse at length, produce scenarios, analysis, sensitivity analysis, and that this is very helpful for us to make decisions. "