The European Central Bank (ECB) wage tracker, which covers active collective bargaining agreements, indicates negotiated wage growth with smoothed one-off payments of 4.6% in 2024 (based on a coverage of 50.1% of employees in participating countries) and 3.2% in 2025 (based on a coverage of 47.9%). The ECB wage tracker with unsmoothed one-off payments indicates negotiated wage growth of 4.8% in 2024 and 2.9% in 2025. The downward trend of the forward-looking wage tracker partly reflects the mechanical impact of large one-off payments (that were paid in 2024 but drop out in 2025) and the frontloaded nature of wage increases in some sectors in 2024. The wage tracker excluding one-off payments indicates growth of 4.1% in 2024 and 3.8% in 2025.
For the first half of 2026, the headline ECB wage tracker stands at 1.7% (down from 2.1% in the second half of 2025 and 4.3% in the first half of 2025), the ECB wage tracker with unsmoothed one-off payments stands at 2.4% (down from 2.6% in the second half of 2025 and from 3.3% in the first half of 2025), and the ECB wage tracker excluding one-off payments stands at 2.5% (down from 3.3% in the second half of 2025 and 4.3% in the first half of 2025). The employee coverage in the first half of 2026 stands at 29.7% (33.3% in the first quarter and 26.0% in the second quarter), down from the 46.3% recorded for the fourth quarter of 2025. The signals from the ECB wage tracker for the first half of 2026 are expected to become more complete as new wage agreements are signed, pushing up the employee coverage indicator from its current relatively low levels. See Chart 1 and Table 1 for further details.
Since the previous data release in July 2025, the ECB wage tracker has been further expanded to retroactively include collective wage agreements in Belgium from January 2013 onwards. The forward-looking horizon has also been extended to the end of June 2026.
Overall, the ECB wage tracker may be subject to revisions, and the forward-looking component should not be interpreted as a forecast, as it only captures the information that is available for active collective bargaining agreements. Moreover, the ECB wage tracker does not track the indicator of negotiated wage growth precisely and deviations are to be expected over time. For a more comprehensive assessment of wage developments in the euro area, please refer to the September 2025 Eurosystem staff macroeconomic projections for the euro area, which indicate a yearly growth rate of compensation per employee in the euro area of 3.4% in 2025 and 2.7% in 2026.
The ECB publishes four wage tracker indicators for the aggregate of eight participating euro area countries on the ECB Data Portal.