The European Central Bank released its latest wage‐tracker data on 4 November 2026, extending the forward‐looking horizon to the end of September 2027. The tracker aggregates active collective‐bargaining agreements across nine euro‐area countries and smooths one‐off payments over 12 months to capture quarterly dynamics in negotiated wages.
For the headline wage tracker, which includes smoothed one‐off payments, the growth rate was 2.7 % in the second half of 2026 (based on 45.6 % employee coverage) and rose to 2.8 % in the first half of 2027 (coverage 31.8 %). The rate then declines to 2.4 % for the third quarter of 2027, where coverage falls further to 23.3 %.
When one‐off payments are excluded, the tracker shows a rise from 2.6 % in 2026 to 2.8 % for the first three quarters of 2027, indicating a slightly higher permanent negotiated wage growth than the full‐year 2026 level. The exclusion‐only measure moderates to 2.5 % in Q3 2027 after reaching 2.9 % in the first half of 2027, with an average of 2.6 % for 2026.
Compared with the September 2026 release, the headline tracker was revised upward by roughly 0.1 percentage point for both the second half of 2026 and the first half of 2027, reflecting new agreements incorporated up to mid‐October 2026.
The unsmoothed one‐off‐payment tracker stands at 2.4 % in Q3 2027, down from 2.7 % in the first half of 2027 and for the full year 2026, highlighting the diminishing impact of one‐off payments that were prominent in earlier periods.
The ECB notes that the forward‐looking component is conditional on the currently available agreements and will be extended to cover the full year 2027 in the December 2026 data release as coverage improves.
For broader context, the ECB’s September 2026 staff macro‐economic projections estimate a yearly compensation‐per‐employee growth of 3.3 % in 2026, suggesting that negotiated wage growth remains below the projected overall compensation increase.