In May 2025, wages in the UK, Netherlands, Germany and France increased by 5.5%, 5.3%, 3.8% and 1.9% year-on-year. This is indeed based on salary data from global recruitment platforms.
After adjusting for inflation – using CPI data from ONS and EuroStat, the UK's real wage growth rate was 2.3%, the Netherlands was 1.8%, Germany was 1.6%, and 1.1% during the same period.
Between occupations and sectors, wage growth varies significantly.
Based on the data that does provide Euronews, we carefully looked at jobs that experienced the largest increase and wage declines each year, which was the three-month moving average as of May 2025.
Our analysis focuses on the 25 largest occupational categories calculated based on the share of their total postings.
Legal roles believe the highest growth in Britain and Germany
Among the four countries mentioned above, the legal roles had the highest real wage growth in Germany and the UK, with an increase of 5.7% and 4.3% respectively. This category includes several professions, and lawyers are the leadership role.
It is true that the average annual salary of lawyers is £53,420 (€61,900) in the UK, and as of mid-2025, the average annual salary in Germany is €71,274. These figures reflect national averages, although wages vary by region. For example, lawyers in London earn an average of around £70,450 (€81,670) per year.
In France, the management sector and the security and public safety sectors have the highest real wage growth, at about 2%. In the Netherlands, the clean and hygienic roles grew the largest at 4%, followed by safety and public safety at 3.9%.
“Posted posts in almost every career category are declining year by year, so it is important to look at wage growth and job posting trends relative to average to see the new employee market over-performing and underperforming.”
Jobs and drivers of wage growth in the UK
Of these four countries, the UK has the highest wage growth, both nominally and truly.
“The high wage growth in the UK has been plaguing economists for a while. Wage growth remains high despite the fact that demand for new workers has dropped significantly,” Adrjan said.
He noted that there are many possible reasons for this trend, and a government has decided to raise the minimum wage. This will not only affect jobs with the lowest salary, but also the ripple effect of salary distribution. Employers may feel the need to raise wages across the board to maintain the wage difference between roles and experience levels.
Another factor driving wage growth is that labor supply is limited by lower immigration rates and high economic inactivity. This means employers are more likely to raise their wages to attract and retain workers.
From the perspective of the 25 largest occupations, the actual wages of certain jobs in the UK have increased by more than 3%. The highest-ranked legal professions improved by 4.3%, while the roles in retail (3.3%), production and manufacturing (3.2%), loading and inventory (3.1%) and customer service (3%) also rose significantly.
Growth showed a steady gradual pattern without extreme outliers, except for the best performing legal departments and the lowest software development efforts (-2.2%).
Health and nursing-related occupations in the UK, including nursing (1.7%), parenting (2.3%), as well as personal care and family health (2.1%), have led to moderate growth in real wages.
Wages in Germany fall
In Germany, the legal role has the strongest growth in real wages at 5.7%, followed by production and manufacturing and medical technician jobs (both 4.1%).
Education, security, media and HR roles also recorded steady growth of 3.5% to 3.9%.
In contrast, IT-related roles are the biggest drop in real wages. For example, IT Operations & Helpdesk roles fell by 6.4%, and software development efforts decreased by 4.2%. For these roles, this means that prices rise faster than wages, reducing workers' purchasing power.
Indeed, Adrjan noted that wage growth has slowed down, but is still above the German euro zone average.
“Wage growth is largely driven by a gradual and coordinated process of union negotiations, which in many cases are derived from years of wage growth that are still affecting today’s trend of total wage growth,” he said.
There is no outlier in wage growth in France
In France, real wage growth is relatively stable, with most occupations gathering between 0.5% and 1.5%. On the lower end, the minimum growth rate for personal care and home health, banking and finance, and software development is 0.2% or less.
Leadership list, Management & Security & Public Safety Positions (both 2%) are closely followed by the Information Design and Documentation Department (1.9%). HR is next 1.8%.
“In France, the minimum wage of inflation is highly indexed, and wages between businesses and unions tend to follow suit, which means wage growth is responding quickly to inflation in 2022 and 2023, and a significant slowdown in inflation over the past two years,” Adrjan explained.
Actual wages belong to the Dutch health and nursing roles
The wage growth in the Netherlands is led by Clean & Sanitation Facilities (4.0%) and Safety & Public Safety (3.9%), with significant gains (3.0%) in banks and financial companies (3.4%), management (3.1%) and construction (3.0%).
In contrast, several nursing-related occupations experienced a decline in real wages, including nursing (-0.3%), childcare (-0.5%) and physicians and surgeons (-0.6%).
Discover more: Salary Trends in the UK, Germany and France
Since the departments listed in the image above cover a range of roles, salary details for specific positions can be found on Inte Inte's website. EuroNews Business Articles also provide detailed salary breakdowns for the UK, Germany and France.
