Phoenix 24
Inflation hurts everywhere, but purchasing power is not falling equally.
Brussels
Food prices have risen sharply across Europe during the past five years, but minimum wages have increased even faster in most of the 26 countries examined by Euronews Business. Across the European Union, food and nonalcoholic beverage prices climbed 34 percent between August 2021 and August 2026. Hungary recorded the largest increase in the bloc at 57 percent, followed by Bulgaria at 54 percent and Romania at 53 percent. Cyprus experienced the smallest increase at 21 percent.
The differences become more striking when wages enter the calculation. Hungary increased its minimum wage by 93 percent over the same five year period, while Germany raised it by 46 percent, Spain by 29 percent and France by 20 percent. Yet a larger salary does not automatically mean workers can buy more food because prices and wages move at different speeds. Measuring how many equivalent food baskets a minimum wage can purchase provides a clearer view of purchasing power.
Only three of the 26 countries analyzed registered a decline in food purchasing power among minimum wage workers. Malta recorded the largest deterioration at approximately 6 percent, meaning that someone able to buy 100 equivalent baskets in 2021 could afford only 94 in 2026. Spain followed with a 5 percent decline, while France lost about 4 percent. Those results stand out because minimum wages increased during the period but failed to keep pace sufficiently with food inflation.
Other countries experienced the opposite trajectory. Serbia and Montenegro recorded gains of about 37 percent in the amount of food that could be purchased with a minimum wage, while Croatia, Albania, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Lithuania all improved by more than 20 percent. Germany registered a 9 percent gain, Greece 7 percent, Belgium and the Netherlands 6 percent, and Portugal 3 percent. The data reveal how differently inflation has been absorbed across European labor markets.
Turkey represents the most extreme case. Food prices increased approximately 752 percent between 2021 and 2026, while the minimum wage rose 823 percent. Despite those extraordinary nominal increases, purchasing power improved by only about 8 percent because both wages and prices expanded from an exceptionally high inflationary base.
The larger lesson is that inflation alone does not determine whether workers become poorer. Purchasing power depends on the interaction between wages and prices, and across Europe that balance has produced sharply different outcomes.
Detrás de cada dato, la intención. / Behind every data point, the intention.