Negotiated wage growth excluding one-off payments stands at 2.8% for the first three quarters of 2027, above the 2026 average, the European Central Bank said in a release.
The central bank puts the 2026 average at 2.6%, a gap of 0.2 percentage point. Its Nov. 4 release is titled “ECB wage tracker suggests slightly higher wage growth in first three quarters of 2027 compared with the full year of 2026”.
The central bank bases its tracker on active collective bargaining agreements, which set pay through negotiations between employers and worker representatives. The figures cover nine participating euro area countries and now extend through September 2027.
The central bank said its headline measure, which spreads one-off payments over 12 months, indicates negotiated wage growth of 2.3% for 2026. It puts growth at 2.7% for the second half of 2026 and 2.8% for the first half of 2027, followed by 2.4% in the third quarter.
The central bank raised the headline readings for the second half of 2026 and first half of 2027 by about 0.1 percentage point on average from its September release.
One-off payments made in the second half of 2024 and not repeated the following year still mechanically lower the headline reading for early 2026, the central bank said. That effect disappears fully in the second half of 2026.
The central bank puts growth excluding one-off payments at 2.9% for the first half of 2027, falling to 2.5% in the third quarter. It said recently signed agreements continue to leave limited room for one-off payments.
A separate measure that records one-off payments without spreading them across months stands at 2.7% for both 2026 and the first half of 2027, the central bank said. That measure falls to 2.4% in the third quarter of 2027.
The central bank said employee coverage falls from 46.2% for 2026 to 31.8% for the first half of 2027 and 23.3% for the third quarter. It described third-quarter coverage as still limited and said it would increase as more agreements were signed.
The central bank said the figures can change and that the future readings are not forecasts, since they capture only information in currently active agreements. It also said differences from the euro area's separate negotiated wage growth indicator should be expected because the measures do not match perfectly.
The headline measure better describes monthly or quarterly changes, while the measure without smoothing better describes annual changes, the central bank said. It plans to extend coverage through the end of 2027 in its next release on Dec. 18.
