One in four women earns minimum wage or less

BarcelonaOne out of every four women (27%) earnt the equivalent of minimum interprofessional wage or less. This percentage was only 12% among men, according to the Wage Structure Survey 2020, published this Wednesday by the National Statistics Institute (INE). The agency highlights that this situation is influenced by the larger percentage of women working part-time. At the same time, 3.7% of men earnt salaries five times higher than minimum wage or more during this same fiscal year, compared to 1.9% of women

Overall, almost one in five workers (19%) earnt at most the SMI, which in the first year of the pandemic was set at €13,300 per year (€950 per month plus a summer and Christmas bonus), while 46% earned between one and two times this amount. Thus, adding the two percentages together, two out of every three Spanish wage earners received under €1,900 per month.

Two years ago, the most frequent salary in Spain was €18,480.19 per year and was received by more than half a million people. This sum, however, was €6,685 lower than the average salary recorded in 2020. Specifically, the average gross annual gross salary per worker rose by 3.2% to €25,165.5. This is the highest figure since at least 2008 and this is the seventh consecutive year in which the figure has increased.

In this sense, the INE explains this difference between the average salary and the most common: there are few workers with very high salaries, but these have a significant influence on the average remuneration. Catalonia was the fourth community with the highest average salary at €27,100.11 per year, behind the Basque Country (€30,224.16), Madrid region (€28,829.06 euros) and Navarre (€27,995.96).

Wage gap

On the other hand, the gap in men's and women's salaries remains, despite a slight reduction in 2020. The average gross annual gross salary for men stood at €27,642.5, 2.6% higher than in 2019, while that women's advanced by 3.6% to €22,467.4. Despite growing at a higher rate, the average annual salary for women is 81% of a man's salary. However, the INE states that this wage gap is narrower if men and women in similar jobs are compared.

Wage earners in hospitality (€14,136 per year), other services (€17,668.1) and administrative activities and auxiliary services (€17,808.5) received the lowest remunerations, while the economic activity with the highest annual remuneration in 2020 was the supply of electrical energy, gas, steam and air conditioning (€53,775.5), which was more than double the national average.