CYPRUS: Hourly labour cost drops by -0.8 in Q4

Hourly labour costs dropped by -0.8 in Cyprus during the last quarter of 2015, compared to the same quarter of the previous year, according to Eurostat.

 
Labour costs followed a downward trend also on Q3 of 2015 by -0.7%.
Meanwhile, the same index rose by 1.3% in the euro area (EA19) and by 1.9% in the EU28 in the fourth quarter of 2015, compared with the same quarter of the previous year, according to Eurostat. In the third quarter of 2015, hourly labour costs increased by 1.1% and 1.9%, respectively.
Eurostat says that the two main components of labour costs are wages and salaries and non-wage costs. In the euro area, wages & salaries per hour worked grew by 1.5% and the non-wage component by 0.7%, in the fourth quarter of 2015 compared with the same quarter of the previous year.
In the third quarter of 2015, the annual changes were +1.5% and +0.2% respectively. In the EU28, hourly wages & salaries rose by 2.0% and the non-wage component by 1.4% for the fourth quarter of 2015. In the third quarter of 2015, annual changes were +2.1% and +1.2% respectively.
The highest annual increases in hourly labour costs for the whole economy were registered in the last quarter of 2015 in Romania (+11.4%), the Czech Republic (+8.6%), Latvia (+7.7%), Bulgaria (+5.8%), Slovakia (+5.3%) and Austria (+5.2%). Decreases were recorded in Italy and Cyprus (both -0.8%), the Netherlands (-0.4%) and Luxembourg (-0.1%).