Protesters march in front of the Greek Parliament during an 24-hour public sector worker’s strike to protest low wages and the hefty living cost in Athens on May 1. [Louisa Gouliamaki/Reuters]
The most recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on real wages deserves to be read carefully, without partisan blinders. The graph that comes with it is impressive: From the first three months of 2021 to the first three months of 2026, Greece posted a cumulative increase in real wages of nearly 5%. This was the second-best performance among OECD countries, behind only South Korea. Germany was just above zero, the United States was in negative territory, while Australia lost about 5% of its wage purchasing power and Italy nearly 6%.
The OECD is not comparing how much the average Greek worker earns relative to the average German worker. The answer to that question is easy: The gap remains enormous. Instead, it measures how the purchasing power of wages has changed since the major inflation shock of the past five years. By that yardstick, Greece not only recovered its losses more quickly than several major European economies, it also narrowed the gap that had separated it from them before 2020.
