The average salary of people residing in Barcelona was 33,837 euros gross per year in 2022. This is stated in the annual report Salaries in Barcelona 2022 that the Analysis Department of the Municipal Data Office of Barcelona City Council has just made public as of of information related to salaries from the Continuous Sample of Working Lives (MCVL).
The information corresponding to workers affiliated with the general Social Security regime, which has been published for 10 years, offers a vision of the salary structure that is completed with the analysis of the salary gap between women and men, the evolution of purchasing power of salaries and other aspects such as the measure of salary inequality in the city.
With an average of 33,837 euros gross per year in 2022, in Barcelona an average salary was 6.2% higher than that of residents in the Metropolitan Area and also higher than that of Catalonia as a whole (15.4%) and Spain (26.4%). The average salary/day of the Barcelona population was 106.30 euros gross.
In nominal terms, average salaries have been recovering from the impact of the pandemic with a notable increase (4.7% compared to 2021). However, the rise in inflation in 2022 was very intense and average salaries in real terms fell (-2.7%), with a loss of purchasing power also compared to the pre-pandemic level of 2019 (-1.2% ).
The gender pay gap has been reduced by about 8 percentage points over the last decade, but the average salary of women is still 17.1% lower than that of men: 30,693 euros and 37,006 euros, respectively, in 2022. This reduction in the gap in the last decade is due to the fact that the lowest average salaries of women have been more favored by the increases in the Minimum Interprofessional Wage (SMI), which has reduced the distances with respect to to men’s wages.
The increases in the SMI have also favored young people and intergenerational salary differences have been reduced in 2022. The youngest age group, up to 24 years old, is the one that registers the largest salary increase compared to 2021 (9.4 % nominal), with a slight increase in purchasing power (1.7%) in the first year of the last labor reform.
The average salaries of those under 25 years of age are also those that experience the most intense rebound in real terms between 2010 and 2022 (28.4%) and present a gain in purchasing power of 10.7% in relation to 2019.
