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The Catalans are the Spaniards who spend the largest proportion of their payroll on paying for rental housing
The price of rent continues to grow and year after year devours a greater portion of the salary of the Catalans. According to the latest edition of the annual report of infojobs Y photohousea worker in Catalonia spends the 54% of your payroll to pay for rental housing. A growing proportion that places the Catalans as the Spaniards who dedicate most of their salary to renting, above other areas with stressed land, such as Madrid (49%), Balearics (49%) or Euskadi (fifty%). A negative fact from this year’s report is that Catalonia is going in the opposite direction to that of Spain as a whole, because while in most of the other territories rental prices have slightly lowered their rise, in the Catalan provinces, especially in Barcelona have continued to grow.
The equation is simple: the rental price is higher every day and salaries have been stagnant for a decade. Result: workers each year dedicate a greater portion of their payroll to pay the roof and they have less left to save, invest, pay for their children’s education, spend on leisure or go on vacation, among many others. If the current inflation is a punctual but significant problem for the workers’ pockets, the price of housing has been an increasingly heavy burden for years.
According to the first data available from Infojobs and Fotocasa, in 2016 a Catalan dedicated an average of 46% of his salary to pay the rent. And, since then, that piece of the pie has grown and grown to the current 54%. Well, wages in Catalonia are at 2,073 euros gross per month (12 payments), compared to an average lease (for a 80 square meters) what does it cost €1,125 each month. On the other side of the coin, always according to data from Infojobs and Fotocasa, is Estremadurawhere with an average rent of 445 euros and a salary of 1,885 euros gross (12 payments), its inhabitants ‘only’ spend 21% of their salary to pay for the roof.
At the level of the whole of Spain, this percentage fell slightly, from 41% to 40%, due to the slowdown in demand for flats unusually forced by the pandemic. “This percentage allocated to the payment of rent is well above what is recommended by the European control bodies and, despite the slight decrease, we are at very unaffordable levels that families or independent young people can face”, warns the director of studies and spokesperson for Fotocasa, Mary Matos.
The difference is in the rent, not in the salary
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Barcelona is, along with Gipuzkoa, the most prohibitive province in all of Spain, where the interprofessional minimum wage is not enough to rent a house of 80 square meters, which costs 1,201 euros per month. In the same its neighbors dedicate, on average, 57% of their salary to rent. The data from the portals of the Adevinta group point to the same line as other sources, such as this year’s report from the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB). According to it, the costs of maintaining a home -whether renting or buying- consume 45.2% of the income of a Barcelonan.
The main difference in Catalonia between living in lleida, Tarragona, Girona o Barcelona is not so much the salary, but the cost of the rent. According to data from Infojobs, the salary differences between the Catalan territories are nuanced, since between the highest salary (Barcelona, 2,105 euros) and the lowest (Lleida, 1,878 euros) it is 227 euros, while in rent ( Barcelona, 1,201 euros; against Lleida, 566 euros) is more than double: 635 euros. In other words, workers in Lleida, Tarragona and, to a lesser extent, Girona earn almost the same as in the Catalan capital but pay much less rent, which allows them to have more salary at the end of the month to dedicate to other tasks and their quality of life.