The European Central Bank has published an updated ECB wage tracker incorporating collective wage agreements signed up to end-February 2026, with the forward-looking horizon still running to end-December 2026. The update continues to indicate that negotiated wage pressures are easing in 2026, with forward-looking information suggesting negotiated wage growth stabilises at around 2.6% by the end of the year. The headline tracker, which smooths one-off payments over 12 months, points to negotiated wage growth of 3.2% in 2025 and 2.3% in 2026, and is revised down by 0.1 percentage points for 2026 compared with the February 2026 release. The version with unsmoothed one-off payments indicates 3.0% in 2025 and 2.6% in 2026, while the series excluding one-off payments shows an easing from 3.9% in 2025 to 2.6% in 2026. For 2026, the headline tracker averages 1.9% in the first quarter and rises to 2.6% in the fourth quarter, which the ECB attributes mainly to statistical effects linked to earlier one-off payments rather than new wage pressures; employee coverage for the aggregate declines over 2026 from 44.1% in the first quarter to 36.3% in the fourth quarter. The ECB notes that the tracker’s forward-looking component is conditional on currently available information in active agreements and should not be interpreted as a forecast, and that the indicators may be revised. As additional agreements extending beyond 2026 are signed, the ECB plans to extend the tracker’s forward-looking horizon to the first quarter of 2027 in the July 2026 data release.

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