Business

Spanish companies see their profit margins soar by 66% since 2019, while inflation threatens salary recovery

The energy sector and housing-related activities account for the rise in corporate profits, which reduces households’ purchasing power, according to CC OO

07/11/2026 Actualizado a las 09:55h.

Inflationary crises are threatening Spanish residents' wage growth. Spain has been caught up in two global inflation crises since 2022, due to the war in ... Ukraine and the conflict in the Middle East. These armed conflicts are at the root of the significant rise in fuel prices that the public has endured in recent years, which has subsequently affected many other products.

However, the impact of the conflicts has been uneven: while households have not managed to regain their pre-2019 purchasing power until this second quarter of the year, corporate profit margins have risen by 66% in nominal terms since the year before the outbreak of Covid-19.

Consequently, the gross operating profit for companies soared from 207 billion euros in 2019 to an annual average of 342 billion up to the second quarter of 2026. At the same time, the operating margin on sales rose from 11% to 12.8% over the same period, according to data from the the CC OO trade union.

This increase is primarily driven by the energy sector and housing-related activities. The former saw its profits rise almost fivefold (+374%) compared with the year before the pandemic broke out. Fuel prices, in the meantime, have doubled.

Sectors directly linked to housing have also seen their profit margins soar during this period: those of financial institutions rose by 93%, construction firms by 90% and property-related activities by 34%. At the same time, house prices have soared by 53%, which has prompted the 24-hour general strike scheduled for 11 November.

However, these are not the only sectors responsible for the rise in corporate profits. The food retail sector has seen its profit margins soar by 51% since 2019, while food prices have risen by 39%, forcing households to spend a larger proportion of their wages on meeting their basic food needs.

Also noteworthy are the increases in the electricity and gas sector, up 73%, and in the hospitality sector, where profits grew by more than 90%, while prices in the sector rose by 31%.

In light of these figures, the CC OO claims that companies have taken advantage of successive inflationary crises to increase their profit margins and pass on a large part of the cost of these crises to workers and consumers. The union is calling for higher wages, price controls and a fairer distribution of the wealth generated.

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