Collective labor agreement wages increased by more than six percent in the third quarter of this year compared to the same quarter a year earlier. It shows from calculations made by the Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) published on Thursday. Because the inflation rate for the third quarter is estimated at 2.6, the real wage increase amounts to 3.4 percent. That is the highest increase of this century.
These real wage increases are still dwarfed by the decreases that occurred in 2022. In the first quarter of that year, real wages fell by 4.4 percent, and the decline was even stronger in the following quarters. Taking inflation into account, this quarter’s increases only partly compensate for last year’s decreases.
It is striking that wages in education rose the most, just like in the same quarter last year, by almost 9 percent. Wages also increased in transport and storage (over 8 percent), water companies and waste management (over 7.3 percent) and energy supplies (over 7 percent). Wages are growing the slowest in real estate rental and trading, at 2.5 percent.
Civil servants
The agricultural, forestry and fishing sector made the biggest jump as a sector with more than 6 percent compared to last year, when the increase was two percent. People who work in the public sector in particular saw their collective labor agreement wages increase considerably, by almost 7 percent. Private and subsidized companies lag slightly behind.
At the same time, Statistics Netherlands sees that contractual wage costs – collective labor agreement wages and employer premiums combined – are rising less rapidly: 5.8 percent in the past quarter. According to Statistics Netherlands, the fact that the increase in wages and contractual wage costs is not the same is because employers who are affiliated with ABP, the government pension fund, no longer have to pay premiums.
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