Gross wages paid to full-time workers increased by 5,5% between January 2021 and 2022 in Belgium, according to a study by Securex. The increase in gross wages was greater among employees, namely +7%awhen the pay slip of the workers increased by 2,3%.
In January 2022, the average gross salary paid to employees was 3757 eurosand of 2480 euros for workers. An increase in wages that goes hand in hand with that of the wage costs borne by employers.
Cascading effect
According to figures from the Securex social secretariat, the gross wages of employees and workers increased between January 2021 and January 2022. Suffice to say that this is good news as the cost of living is increasing. raised.
It was particularly at the end of the pandemic that workers might see the difference on their payslip. Els Vanderhaegen, legal counsel at Securex, explains these increases by a cascading effect: “We see that following the increase in the price of energy, inflation logically increased. And so, this also has an impact on the automatic indexation of wages.“
The increase differs between workers and employees
This study, whose sample is made up of 10,679 companies and 59,943 workers in the private sector in Belgium, reveals that not everyone is in the same boat. Workers see their gross salary increased by 2.3%, once morest 7.3% for employees.
The first reason lies in the fact that not all sectors have yet experienced indexation in January. Additionally, some sectors will experience additional indexing in the future.
Els Vanderhaegen gives us the other reason for this difference in treatment: “It is also because workers experienced a much longer period of temporary unemployment during confinement, while employees were more teleworked. It is not the employer who must, in this case, pay the wages of the worker. Through the intervention of the government, it is the ONEM which took charge of part of their salary by paying an indemnity. This is also why there is a difference between the increase in the gross wages of workers and employees“.
If an additional indexation is soon expected for employees, it is the workers who will logically experience higher increases.
Salary costs follow the trend
Parallel to these salary increases, the study shows that salary costs for the employer have a similar evolution. It should be noted that the salary cost for the employer increased by 5% between 2021 and 2022.
For employees, these costs increased by 6.7%, once morest 2% for workers.
Horeca strongly affected by the crisis
In the Horeca sector hard hit by the health crisis, temporary unemployment lowered wage costs by 24.5% in January 2021 compared to 2020. Gross wages followed this curve in the same way. In January of this year, labor costs were still 3.3% lower than in January 2020. The reason: unemployment in the hospitality sector (7.6%) is even higher than before the period Covid.
The Vanderhaegen, legal advisor to Securexbook that the future predicts further increases: “Even if the government has taken decisions to reduce energy prices, inflation will still be very high in 2022. This will still have an impact on future indexations. So the forecast is that wages will go up further.“
Automatic indexation obliges, the increase in wages is good news. However, it is clear that inflation reduces purchasing power insofar as life is more and more expensive.
