In the private sector, collective labor agreement wages increased by 5.7 percent, the highest rise. In the government sector, wages increased the least in the first quarter of 2025; 4.7 percent compared to a year earlier. In subsidized institutions, wages increased by 5.4 percent.
Most of the healthcare sector falls under the subsidized institutions sector. For several major collective agreements in healthcare (e.g., nursing homes, home care, and youth healthcare (VVT); hospitals; care for the disabled and mental healthcare), new definitive agreements are missing. However, a provisional agreement is in place for these collective agreements, which will be voted on in April. The percentage of concluded collective agreements in the subsidized sector is therefore 41 percent.
In the information and communication industry, collective labor agreement wages increased by 9.6 percent in the first quarter of 2025, the highest increase. The other services industry (e.g., textile care, hairdressers, and funeral services) also saw a significant rise of 8.8 percent in the first quarter.
In the real estate rental and trade industry (housing corporations), collective labor agreement wages remained unchanged. A year earlier, the wage increase in this industry was the highest. In healthcare, for most collective agreements, no new definitive agreement was reached at the beginning of 2025, resulting in missing wage data for this industry in the first quarter of 2025.
The contractual labor costs, which include collective labor agreement wages plus employer premiums (pension, disability, unemployment, and health insurance), increased by 5.7 percent in the first quarter of 2025. This is slightly more than the development of collective labor agreement wages. This is mainly due to increased employer premiums for disability (AOF) and unemployment (AWF) in 2025, while the premium for health costs decreased.
The real wage increase, where the collective labor agreement wage is adjusted for inflation, was 1.8 percent in the first quarter. This marks the fourth consecutive quarter of declining real wage growth.
The preliminary figures for the first quarter of 2025 are based on 83 percent of the collective agreements from which the statistics are compiled. Three-quarters of the employees are covered by a collective agreement.
In December 2023, CBS started a new series of collective labor agreement wages, with 2020 as the base year. More information can be found in a comprehensive description: Index figures of collective labor agreement wages; method description series 2020=100