The salaries of management personnel in the Canary Islands were the third lowest in Spain in 2021, with an average of 74,796 euros, only exceeding those of Extremadura (70,890) and La Rioja (72,833), remaining almost 8,000 euros below the Spanish average as a whole (82,719) and even further from the communities with the highest salaries in the country, which were Madrid, with 88,758 euros, Catalonia, with 86,791, and Navarre, with 82,781.
This is according to a report by EADA and ICSA that reveals that the salary of managers fell throughout the national territory substantially more than that of employees in 2021, since the average salary of executives of 82,719 euros was 4.1% lower than in 2020, that of middle managers, of 42,247 euros, fell by 1.88%), and that of workers, of 23,400 euros, fell by 0.56%.
The largest decrease in the salary of managers is explained because, having variable salaries, they have not met the planned objectives, since companies have had a "complicated" year due to the pandemic, while lower salaries are usually more indexed to agreements.
Something that is exposed in the fifteenth edition of the report "Salary Evolution 2007-21", which was presented this Wednesday by the president of the consulting firm ICSA, Ernesto Poveda, and the professor of the EADA business school Jordi Assens.
The study was prepared from a sample of more than 80,000 data recorded among employees from July 2020 to July 2021, when an interannual inflation of 2.9% was recorded, although the rise in prices skyrocketed at the end of the year.
For Assens, covid-19 has hit the economy and salaries are falling, "which is positive for companies", because it means they have flexibility to adapt to situations, and it is assumed that when things go well "salaries will rise again".
Comparison with 2007
The study also refers to the salary difference between 2007 and 2021 and points out that employees are the ones who have lost the most purchasing power in these years, 0.64%, while middle managers have increased it by 1.29% and managers, 0.3%.
According to Poveda, salaries are "stagnant" for many years and "conflictivity will increase" because it does not seem that the purchasing power of the population will increase, despite the fact that both experts predict that there will be some salary increase this year.
In his opinion, it would be a "strategic error" to pass on inflation to salaries because "our competitiveness would decrease and it would cost us very dearly".
In this sense, he stressed that the "exorbitant" growth of the CPI is disrupting the remuneration model, still too subject to the fixed salary indexed to the CPI, and considered that we are facing a "unique" opportunity to rethink it.
Therefore, he has advocated that inflation be one more element to take into account, but not the only one, and incorporate other factors, such as business profits or productivity.
Assens added that most of the economic fabric is not betting on innovation and, without it, "salaries are not going to rise", and assured that, if productivity increases, salaries rise and working hours are reduced, as happens in Germany.
By sectors, the financial sector has already ceded the leadership of salaries to the industrial sector two years ago, while commerce and tourism are once again the worst paid and have been the most affected by the pandemic.
By autonomous communities, Madrid leads the remuneration of managers (88,758 euros), followed by Catalonia (86,791) and Navarra (82,781), while at the bottom are Extremadura (70,890), La Rioja (72,833) and the Canary Islands (74,796).
Madrid also leads the remuneration of middle managers (44,821), followed by Catalonia (43,254) and Asturias (41,936), with Extremadura (36,150), La Rioja (36,865) and the Canary Islands (38,201) again in the last places, as well as the salary of employees (29,942), ahead, in this case, of Navarra (24,852) and Catalonia (24,564), while Extremadura (19,771), La Rioja (20,156) and Castilla León (20,835) close this classification.
Poveda explained that, the greater the "concentration" of large companies a territory has, the greater its remuneration level, and recalled that Navarra has always been among the first positions, perhaps due to the type of industry that the community has and because they have been "more generous in the distribution of income".