Of the 31 OECD countries analysed, nine recorded an increase in real per capita household income, while twelve recorded a fall, although among the large eurozone economies only Spain maintained its deterioration, with a loss of 7.85%, the worst figure of all the OECD countries.
Although this household income exceeded pre-pandemic levels in the third quarter of 2022 in almost all OECD countries, Spain led the group of those that remained in negative values, along with Portugal (-4.1%), Finland (-1.8%), the Czech Republic (-1.7%) and Denmark (-1.3%).
Spanish households have therefore suffered the biggest fall in real incomes of all the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries since before the pandemic – from the fourth quarter of 2019 to the third quarter of 2022. In the OECD as a whole, this disposable income – compared with the pre-pandemic situation at the end of 2019 – shows an improvement of 1.87%.
In contrast to Spanish households, the growth in household income recorded between the last quarter of 2019 and the third quarter of 2022 in some countries puts the Spanish economic recovery into the spotlight. Among the large economies, Germany (+0.9%), France (+0.8%), Italy (+0.6%) and the United States (+0.5%) achieved positive balances in their per capita incomes. The countries where real incomes rose the most were Poland (7.16%), Slovenia (6.53%) and Hungary (4.26%). Also in Australia (4.55%) and Canada (4.09%).
