Hourly labour costs for business in Malta decrease in Q1

Nominal hourly labour costs for the business economy in Malta decreased by 0.3% in the first quarter of the year, with a decrease of 0.2% as regards wages, figures from Eurostat published on Monday said.

Hourly labour costs rose by 0.9% in the euro area (EA18) and by 1.2% in the EU28 in the first quarter of 2014, compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, hourly labour costs increased by 1.6% in the euro area and by 1.4% in the EU28.

The two main components of labour costs are wages and salaries and non-wage costs.

In the euro area, wages and salaries per hour worked grew by 1.5% while the non-wage component decreased by 0.8%, in the first quarter of 2014 compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

In the fourth quarter of 2013 the annual increases were 2.0% and 0.4% respectively.

In the EU28, hourly wages and salaries rose by 1.7% while the non-wage component decreased by 0.3% for the first quarter of 2014, compared with +1.7% and +0.4% respectively for the fourth quarter of 2013.

In the first quarter of 2014 compared with the same quarter of the previous year, hourly labour costs in the euro area rose by 0.7% in industry, by 1.9% in con- struction, by 1.3% in services and by 0.5% in the (mainly) nonbusiness economy.

In the EU28, labour costs per hour grew by 1.1% in industry, by 1.9% in construction, by 1.6% in services and by 0.6% in the (mainly) non-business economy.

Among the member states for which data are available for the first quarter of 2014, the highest annual increases in hourly labour costs for the whole economy were registered in Latvia (+7.0%), Estonia (+6.8%), Romania (+5.3%) and Poland (+4.2%).

Decreases were recorded in Cyprus (-6.9%), Croatia (-1.7%), Ireland (-0.2%) and Italy (-0.1%).

The hourly labour costs for Malta rose by 1.5% in Q1 with wages increasing by 1.7%.