Actual labour costs and rate of inflation in the EU
Hourly labour costs rose by 1.6% in the euro area (EA19) and by 1.9 % in the EU28 in the second quarter of 2015, compared with the same quarter of the previous year. Euro area infaltion was 0.1 % in August, down from 0.2 % in July
In the first quarter of 2015, hourly labour costs increased by 1.9 % in the euro area and by 2.3 % in the EU28. The two main components of labour costs are wages & salaries and non-wage costs. In the euro area, wages & salaries per hour worked grew by 1.9 % and the non-wage component by 0.4 %, in the second quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter of the previous year. In the first quarter of 2015, the annual changes were +2.0 % for wages & salaries and +1.4 % for non-wage costs. In the EU28, hourly wages & salaries rose by 2.1 % and the non-wage component by 1.1 % in the second quarter of 2015. In the first quarter of 2015, annual changes were +2.4 % and +2.1 % respectively.
The job vacancy rate in both the euro area (EA19) and the EU28 was 1.7% in the second quarter of 2015, stable compared with the previous quarter, but up from 1.6% in the second quarter of 2014, according to figures published by Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union.
Euro area annual inflation was 0.1 % in August 2015, down from 0.2 % in July. In August 2014 the rate was 0.4 %. European Union annual inflation was 0.0 % in August 2015, down from 0.2 % in July. A year earlier the rate was 0.5 %. These figures come from Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union. In August 2015, negative annual rates were observed in eleven Member States. The lowest annual rates were registered in Cyprus (-1.9%), Romania (-1.7%) and Lithuania (-1.0%). The highest annual rates were recorded in Malta (1.4 %), Austria (0.9 %) and Belgium (0.8 %). Compared with July2015, annual inflation fell in fourteen Member States, remained stable in four and rose in ten. The largest upward impacts to euro area annual inflation came from restaurants & cafés (+0.10 percentage points), vegetables (+0.09 pp) and tobacco (+0.08 pp), while fuels for transport (-0.55 pp), heating oil (-0.25 pp) and milk, cheese & eggs (-0.07 pp) had the biggest downward impacts.