With the aim of reaching 60% of the average salary in Spain, the government recently announced the rise in the minimum interprofessional wage (SMI). The actual increase up to 1,080 euros It represents a growth of 8% compared to 2022, when the SMI stood at 1,000 euros. Thus, since 2017, the SMI has increased by 52%, from 707 euros to the current amount.
As pointed out by CCOO, the new increase benefits 13.7% of the salaried population. In this sense, it will also have a greater impact on women. From Cepyme, on the other hand, they highlight that small and medium-sized companies will be the ones that will be most affected by the increase, since 38% of those with employees pay the SMI. For its part, the CEOE has avoided assessing the measure, and before its approval stated that the Executive had not come to consider its proposal to raise the minimum wage by 4%.
Last year, the SMI raised a total of 35 euros, until reaching 1,000 euros. Agreement wages, however, closed last year with an increase of 2.78%, three percentage points below inflation (5.7% at the end of 2022, according to INE data), which translates into a loss of purchasing power for Spanish wage earners. However, given the inflationary spiral, the different national and international organizations called for wage moderation.
In this context, the employment platform InfoJobs, has asked more than 1,800 companies about the recent rise in the SMI. The survey data highlights that six out of 10 companies (62%) in Spain are would be satisfied with the new interprofessional minimum wage.
In contrast, and when asked about the impact of this rise, one in three (35%) declares that there will be less hiring in the companyand the 31% claims it could cause he dismissal of employees if costs increase a lot.
In the words of Mónica Pérez, director of communication and studies at InfoJobs: “We thought it was necessary to raise the remuneration of the lowest salary brackets in our country, also taking into account the loss of purchasing power that has occurred in the last year”. Perez adds: “It is true, however, that the current economic context, together with this new increase, can be detrimental for an important part of the companies in Spain, affecting hiring or employment. It would have been necessary to have the agreement of the employer”.
SMEs, more reticent
Depending on the size of the company, there is a clear difference between companies with fewer employees and larger ones. In this sense, SMEs are more reticent in the face of the benefits that the increase in the SMI may have; a difference that increases to 24 percentage points among microenterprises (1 to 9 employees) -51% approve of the new increase- and the big (+249 employees) -75% approvals-.
In this sense, it should be noted that the Four. Five% of the smaller companies They assure that this fact will entail fewer employees hired. Said statement in the big enterprises is backed by the 24% of the companies surveyed, which represents a difference of 21 percentage points between both types of company. Likewise, 36% of companies with fewer than 10 employees admit that the increase in company costs will cause the dismissal of workers in some cases, compared to 22% of large organizations.
