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Nuria Triguero
Malaga
Tuesday, 19 November 2024, 09:56
Salaried workers in Malaga earned 6.2% more for their work in 2023 than in the previous year, reaching an average income of 20,648 euros per year. Divided into 14 payments, this sum is equivalent to 1,474 euros per month. This is the first time that Malaga has exceeded the 20,000 euros per annum mark and represents a significant increase of 1,205 euros in just one year. In fact, Malaga is in fourth place on the list of provinces in the country for the highest wage increases. It is only behind Almeria (+6.34%), Jaen (+6.26%) and the Balearic Islands (+6.25%). The rate of increase is almost one point higher than the national average, which stood at 5.27%. The statistics come from the publication 'labour market in tax sources', produced by the Spanish tax office (AEAT) with data supplied by employers.
While Malaga manages to nudge up two places in the national salary ranking, it is still in the bottom half of the table. In 2023 it occupied 33rd place out of 48 provinces included in the ranking (neither the Basque Country nor Navarre appear, as they are regions not overseen by AEAT). Workers in Malaga province declared earning 3,333 euros less per year than the national average, 402 euros less than those in Seville (but the gap is closing) and 10,121 less than those in Madrid, who are the highest earners in the whole country. However, they are above the Andalusian average of 19,618 euros.
At this point it is necessary to clarify the methodology of this report because its results vary with respect to other statistical sources, such as the Annual Wage Structure Survey carried out by the INE (Spain's national statistics institute) or the stats on wages in Andalucía from IECA (Andalucía's institute of statistics and cartography). AEAT takes the total salary payments declared to the Treasury and divides it by the total number of employees to obtain the average annual salary. This means that workers who do not work the whole year or who work part-time are also included, which produces a downward bias in the resulting average wage. This particularly penalises provinces affected by greater seasonality and a higher rate of part-time work contracts, as is the case with Malaga. Hence Malaga exceeds Seville, for example, in average salary according to IECA's statistics, but Treasury data puts Malaga lower.
Last year's wage increase in Malaga was almost double that of inflation, which stood at 3.8%. It can therefore be said that workers recouped some purchasing power in 2023 after the price hikes of the previous two years.
If we look further back we can see that, since the end of the pandemic, Malaga has seen a significant increase in salaries. In 2021 there was a year-on-year increase of 6.88%, in 2022 7.35% and in 2023 6.25%. The average salary is 21.85% higher than in 2020. Taking into account the methodology used for AEAT's statistics, it must be understood that this improvement is not only due to the fact that companies are paying more, but also because Malaga's employed are working more days in the year and with longer working hours. In other words, we are seeing an improvement in the quality and stability of employment in the province.
Salaries are rising, but the pay gap between men and women is hardly narrowing. Female workers in Malaga recorded an income of 18,032 euros per year, compared to 22,804 euros for their male counterparts. The difference is 19.7% or 4,503 euros per year, depending on whether it is calculated in absolute or relative terms. Five years earlier, in 2018, the difference was 21.8%. This gender gap should not be interpreted as meaning that women earn less for equal work. It is the result of the sum of the inequalities that continue to exist between men and women in the world of work: the presence of women is greater in lower-paid sectors (such as hospitality, retail and cleaning services) and less in better-paid sectors (such as the financial, technological or industrial sectors). In addition, the incidence rate of women's part-time contracts is higher than that of men.
Another persistent gap in the labour market is that of age: young people do not earn the same salaries as older workers. In the 56 to 65 age bracket the highest average annual salary in Malaga is 25,004 euros per year. This figure decreases with age: between 46 and 55 the average salary income reaches 24,807 euros, for those aged 36 to 45 it is 22,386, then 26 to 35 (17,505) and finally, for 18 to 25-year olds, it is 8,254 euros. It should be noted that in this last group the average salary is very biased downwards due to the number of young people who only work during the summer months.
AEAT's report also reveals the best and worst paid sectors in Malaga. Financial institutions and insurance companies have always been in first place, with an average annual salary of 30,472 euros, benefitting just over 11,000 workers. However, the tech industry has been hot on the heels of the banking and finance sectors thanks to the sharp rise in salaries more recently recorded as a result of the talent shortage and the arrival in Malaga of large companies with highly qualified jobs. Thus, in second place in the ranking are the more than 18,000 workers in the ICT category, with an average annual salary of 34,008 euros in 2023. Five years earlier, the average salary in this sector was 24,159 euros, so it has increased by 10,000 euros.
Activities linked to "extractive industry [extraction of non-renewable, primary resources], energy and water" are in third place, with an average salary of 31,752 euros per year. This category has very few employees in the province, only around 6,000. The fourth highest paid sector in Malaga is "social services", which includes 155,000 workers in the healthcare industry, nursing homes and care homes for the elderly, with an average salary of 28,675 euros per year. It is followed by industry, construction and real estate activities, then "commerce, repairs and transport" group and business services.
In penultimate place in the salary ranking is the 'walking disaster' batch lot of "Other personal and leisure services", which includes the hotel and hospitality industry, with an average annual salary of 13,857 euros, a figure that is heavily influenced by temporary workers who only work during peak tourist season. Last place, the worst-paid sector by far, goes to agriculture, livestock and fishing, where the influence of seasonal workers pulls down the average salary to 8,141 euros per year.
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