February 20, 2024 10:59 GMT
Negotiated Wage Growth Decreases After 5 Consecutive Upticks
EUROZONE DATA
Eurozone negotiated wages for Q4 2023 came in at +4.46% Y/Y (vs +4.69% prior).
- This is the first time the growth rate declined after 5 consecutive increases, and will be seen rather favourably by the ECB, as indicated by recent comments by the likes of President Lagarde and Schnabel. A wider set of Q1 2024 wage data will be accessible to the ECB's governing council by its June meeting.
- Even if the wages developments are less of a concern, the growth rate is still nominally high, particularly in the light of weak productivity developments in the Eurozone, so Q4's slowdown in wage growth may not move the needle strongly towards earlier rate cuts.
- Conversely, the indeed.com wage tracker covering the same time period, was broadly flat in the last few months of '23, if not in a slight uptrend. For January, the tracker printed an uptick, coming in at 4.05% Y/Y (vs 3.95% prior) and 3.89% Y/Y 3MMA (vs 3.83% prior), implying some wage growth upside momentum at its highest value since five months for the less volatile 3M moving average measure.
MNI, ECB, Eurostat, indeed.com
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