Personnel costs are becoming a risk factor for companies

Dusseldorf, Berlin Wages and salaries in Germany in October were 7.1 percent higher than in the same month last year. This rapid increase is the result of an evaluation by the job platform Indeed and the Irish central bank, which is exclusively available to the Handelsblatt.

Germany thus recorded the highest increase among the six large euro countries compared and the United Kingdom. In France, for example, wages and salaries increased by five percent, in Spain only by 3.5 percent.

This development hits companies at a bad time: Energy and raw material prices are already rising anyway, and now personnel costs are becoming a burden. In the areas of cleaning, gastronomy, social services, logistics and customer service, wages have recently grown faster than inflation.

This fuels concerns about a wage-price spiral, i.e. the mutual escalation of wages and inflation. In a survey conducted by the family business association in early summer, 89 percent of companies feared such a spiral.