Sensa, a specialist in wage consultancy in Spain and partner of Seresco in the Iberian Peninsula, provides an analysis of wage practices in Portugal and Spain. As neighboring countries and members of the European Union, both countries share some revanchist policies. Historically, Spain has higher salaries and a lower tax burden. Learn about the values in detail.
To understand salary developments in both countries, Sensa and Ceresco analyzed some economic data. For example, regarding the development of GDP, graphic similarities are observed, although there are due differences.
In the first years analyzed, the difference in GDP of the two countries did not exceed 35%. From 2004 to 2015, it increased significantly, being higher than from 2006 to 2008, reaching a maximum of 43.23% in 2006. Only in 2018 did this interval decrease, and in 2022 a difference of 20.19% between the output GDP of Portugal. And Spain.
These differences and similarities reflect the diversity and individual development of each country. Analyzing the evolution of the average salary in Portugal and Spain, using information provided by the datosmacro.com portal of the Spanish newspaper Expansión, a similar behavior can be observed between GDP and average salaries between Spaniards and Portuguese. Data indicates that the gap between the two countries has been decreasing over the years, leading us to consider that salaries in both markets will be increasingly similar in the near future.
Looking at the difference in average salaries in Portugal and Spain, it can be seen that it reached 58.58% in 2000, and then gradually decreased over the following years. In the last four years analyzed, the recorded difference was 39.45% in 2019, 31.01% in 2020, 33.32% in 2021, and 31.25% in 2022.
In the following table, you can see the details of this same data about the annual development of the average salary in both countries, along with the percentage difference between them:
source: datasmacro.com
Over the 22 years under analysis, the average salary difference recorded between Portugal and Spain was 46.15%, with a clear tendency towards a reduction of this gap. Spain showed notable variation in average salary, with more notable increases than those recorded in Portugal.
To accurately illustrate the data, they focused on the two main cities in each country, Lisbon and Porto in Portugal, and Madrid and Barcelona in Spain. The global findings according to the latest 2023 wages report are:
· In Spain, the difference in average salary between the two large cities studied, Madrid and Barcelona, was 7%.
Conducting the same analysis in Portugal, the difference in average salary between Lisbon and Porto is 6.07%.
If you take Barcelona as a reference and compare cities in both markets, you will get the following percentage differences:
Below, in the table, salaries are detailed for some positions, according to the salary study conducted by CEINSA, where outstanding differences are noted at the global level:
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