Real Wage and Price Development in Germany, 1991 - 2022

Real wage development

Wage increases do not inevitably lead to an increase in disposable income due to inflation rates. To classify wage development, real wages are first presented, differentiated by type of employment, service group and economic sector. This is then compared with the consumer price index (CPI), both on the basis of the year 2015 and on the basis of 2020. Here, the goods sectors of food and - on the basis of 2015 - also housing rents are presented separately once again.

Base years of the CPI (2015 and 2020)

The consumer price index measures the average price development of all goods and services that private households purchase for consumption purposes. It is a central indicator for assessing the development of the value of money and is used as a benchmark in wage negotiations, for example.
With the base year, the calculation modules of the consumer price index (= CPI) on the consumption habits and purchasing behaviour of private households are adjusted to the conditions of the respective year (here: 2015 and 2020). This also includes that the Systematic Schedule of Income and Expenditure of Private Households (abbreviation SEA) is converted and included in its new form in the revision of the CPI. The selection of the individual price representatives forms the determination of the so-called basket of goods with a total of 750 goods. The determination of the weight with which the price development of the individual price representatives are included in the overall index form the weighting scheme. The weighting scheme of the goods and services is recalculated at each revision.
The weighting scheme contains the weighting shares for the goods areas of the upper basket level. This weighting information reflects the importance of the individual goods sectors for the population of all goods and services in the respective economic stages.
The basis for the recalculation of the weighting scheme is the sample survey of income and consumption, the statistics of the current economic accounts and data of the national accounts.
All new weighting schemes refer to the respective base year (i.e. in the case of the present data series to 2015 or 2020) "and remain constant until the next revision in order to be able to represent price developments unaffected by changes in expenditure weights (Laspeyres index)." Ute Egner (2019): Verbraucherpreisstatistik auf neuer Basis 2015. In: Wirtschaft und Statistik (WISTA), 5, 2019, S. 89.
In the table, the weighting scheme appears in the table header in the row ´Weighting in 0/00´ (weight in per mille).