For the first time since 2007, wages in Germany fell last year

The Federal Statistical Office Destatis said that the corona crisis last year had a negative impact on people's incomes in Germany. For the first time since the start of data recording in 2007, nominal wages have fallen. Gross wages, including extraordinary payments, fell by an average of 0.6 percent in 2020, Destatis said in its preliminary estimate. As consumer prices rose by 0.5 percent, real wages fell by about one percent. Real salaries have declined just twice in the last 13 years. Following the financial crash, there was a small decline of 0.1% in actual earnings in 2009 and a similar decrease of 0.1% in 2013 in the wake of the Greek debt crisis. The decline in wages interrupts years of steady wage increases, with six years of successive growth of more than 1% between 2014 and 2019, as the German economy as a whole was thriving. However, the statistics do not take into account money paid out under the kurzarbeit system, which was intended to reduce the loss of income of millions of employees during the corona crisis.