Greek salaries yet to catch up
The Greek worker is the only one in Europe who still has a lower nominal salary compared to 10 years ago. If we compare it with the pre-bailout levels (before 2010), the losses reach 17% without taking into account any damage caused by inflation.
Even in 2013 – in the midst of the bailout storm – Greece still held 14th place in Europe based on the average annual earnings of a full-time worker. Today it ranks fifth from bottom among the 27 member-countries. Greece surpasses only Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania, while the difference with Poland is now minimal.
The divergence with the rest of the European member-states continues, as even in the last two years when salaries started to rise again, the growth pace is the second slowest in the European Union.
A major problem is the lag in labor competitiveness, deductions from wages – so-called non-salary costs – which remain high, despite the reductions of recent years, but also the very low wages paid by small and medium-sized enterprises in Greece. Therefore the level of salaries and the low productivity of labor emerge as the main problem of households.
