The European Central Bank published an update to its wage tracker, adding collective wage agreements signed through end-August 2025 and extending the forward-looking horizon to end-June 2026. The updated tracker continues to indicate easing negotiated wage growth, with preliminary signals pointing to lower and more stable wage growth in the first half of 2026, although employee coverage remains limited. The wage tracker shows negotiated wage growth (with smoothed one-off payments) of 4.6% in 2024 and 3.2% in 2025, based on employee coverage of 50.1% and 47.9% respectively. Alternative measures show 2024 and 2025 growth of 4.8% and 2.9% with unsmoothed one-off payments, and 4.1% and 3.8% excluding one-off payments, with the downward profile partly reflecting one-off payments in 2024 dropping out in 2025 and frontloaded sectoral increases in 2024. For the first half of 2026, the headline tracker stands at 1.7% (2.4% with unsmoothed one-off payments and 2.5% excluding one-off payments), with employee coverage at 29.7%, down from 46.3% in the fourth quarter of 2025; the dataset was also expanded to include Belgian wage agreements retroactively from January 2013. The ECB noted that forward-looking signals are conditional on information in active collective bargaining agreements, may be revised and should not be interpreted as a forecast; coverage for the first half of 2026 is expected to rise as additional wage agreements are signed. For a broader view of wage dynamics, it referenced the September 2025 Eurosystem staff projections, which indicate compensation per employee growth of 3.4% in 2025 and 2.7% in 2026.

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