Barcelona Chamber of Commerce reports stagnation of wages for nearly two decades

A report from the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce has shown a "stagnation" in the improvement of several indicators of social and economic progress in Catalonia over the past couple of decades. 

According to the study, economic progress moving in convergence with countries such as Germany or Belgium has stalled, leading to a setback in social and environmental sustainability. President of the Chamber, Mònica Roca, explained that this stagnation is particularly visible in wages, where there is no improvement in the average real salary in Catalonia between 2023 and 2004.

"It is clear that the Catalan economy has deficits in key areas that determine well-being and that are often camouflaged when we talk about macroeconomic figures," Roca warned.

According to the Chamber, poverty in Catalonia and Spain as a whole has historically been strongly linked to the evolution of the unemployment rate. However, this has not played out the same in recent years following the Covid-19 pandemic, when the unemployment rate in Catalonia has fallen while the percentage of households in difficulty has increased sharply.

This is particularly reflected in the number of people who cannot afford to maintain a "comfortable" temperature in their home: two out of five families in 2022.

For Roca, these indicators on progress and well-being are worrying. "For a country to be sustainable, it must be energetically sustainable, and this has an impact on the reduction of poverty," she highlighted, as the entity criticized Catalonia's problems in increasing the electricity production capacity.

As for wages, the Chamber of Commerce president believes they are "low" in Catalonia, something she thinks harms productivity and Catalonia's ability to attract talent. "We think they should increase, another thing is how to do it so that companies can afford it," she admitted.