The EU’s statistical office Eurostat released its Labour Costs Index for the second quarter on Tuesday, indicating an average increase of 1.2 percent in the second quarter in both the eurozone and the 28 EU countries year-on-year.
The highest increase of 2.5 percent was noted in the industrial sector.
The total cost of hourly labour includes gross wages, additional earnings like performance-based bonuses, and social security contributions.
Eurostat found that the highest rise in hourly labour costs occurred in Estonia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania and Romania. Cyprus and Ireland saw labour costs fall.
Eurostat initially reported that Finland's labour costs had risen by four percent, but this information was corrected later in the day.
Statistics Finland, Finland’s official data collection authority, confirmed that in Finland, the price of labour rose in the second quarter by 2.9 percent overall compared with the corresponding period in 2013, but it did rise by over four percent in manufacturing.
Statistics Finland reports that the rise is due to the extended Easter holiday in the spring and payouts to growing numbers of employees who had been made redundant or were laid-off, even though they were no longer working.
