Pay and income

In 2024, the automotive sector in the EU came to the fore in public and policy discussions. The focus was on the slowdown in electric vehicle (EV) sales, rising global competition, belated investments in new technologies, and the potential closure of production lines in Europe.

This is a new sentence added to the original text.

This 2024 annual review of minimum wages provides a synopsis of minimum wage setting during 2023 in the EU27 and Norway. It reports in detail on the processes and outcomes of setting the minimum wage rates for 2024 and beyond. It investigates the extent to which minimum wage earners were affected by the cost-of-living crisis and shows how minimum wage workers are distributed across households over the entire income distribution. The report also addresses the criteria that minimum wage setters considered when setting the new rates for 2024 and to what extent these criteria already include the minimum elements mentioned in Article 5 of the EU Minimum Wage Directive. It provides some initial insights into Member States’ activities around the transposition of the directive, which was a moving target at the time of drafting the report. Finally, an overview of the latest minimum wage research related to the EU27 and Norway completes this report.