Reality knocked

In Sweden, it has been understood the wages should increase every year, regardless of how the companies or the employee have performed. At the same time, the value of the Swedish krona has steadily fallen. This development was bound to implode sooner or later.

The nominal wage increase was 2.5% between September 2022 and September 2023. If you subtract inflation, you get the real wage increase. Since inflation has been kept at a low level for most of the period 1995-2021, real wages have increased by an average of 1.8% a year. 

During the last two years, together with high inflation, we have had a negative real wage trend.