Average salary buys less chicken, fruit and gold than in 2014

The average salary today buys less chicken, oil and gold than in 2014

The average gross salary in Spain has gone from 1,904 euros in 2014 to 2,245 euros in 2022, an 18% increase. On paper, a substantial improvement. However, when that salary is converted into units of concrete goods —kilos of chicken, litres of oil, grams of gold or square metres of housing— the picture changes. For most of the products analysed, the average worker today buys less than a decade ago. The paradox is no small one: the payslip grows, but the basket shrinks.

The exercise, set up as a direct comparison between the 2014 and 2022 salaries using prices from supermarket flyers from both periods, yields a consistent pattern. It is not an isolated product or a one-off situation. It is a trend that cuts across food, energy, housing and even safe-haven assets like gold.

Chicken, apples and oranges: the basic basket gets more expensive

The most striking case is chicken breast. With the 2014 minimum wage (645 euros), you could buy 129 kilos at 4.99 euros per kilo. In 2025, with the minimum wage at 1,180 euros and chicken at 7.29 euros, the figure rises to 161 kilos. It is the exception: chicken is more affordable today for someone earning the minimum wage. But when using the average salary, the result is reversed: from 381 kilos in 2014 to 307 kilos in 2025, 19% less.

Apples and oranges trinc the same path. With the minimum wage, purchases went from 758 kilos of apples in 2014 to 637 in 2025, and from 1,433 kilos of oranges to 1,242. With the average salary, the loss is even starker. The pattern repeats with eggs: from 1,277 dozen in 2014 to 883 in 2024, 30% less.

Olive oil: from 521 litres to 280

Carbonell extra virgin olive oil is another of the products analysed. In 2014, the average salary allowed you to buy 521 litres at 3.65 euros. In 2025, with the price at 7.99 euros, the figure drops to 280 litres. The loss exceeds 46%. Even adjusting the calculation to sale prices (2.43 euros in 2014 and 5.33 euros in 2025), the comparison does not change: from 783 litres to 421.

Diesel also reflects the deterioration. In 2014, the average salary bought 1,420 litres at 1.34 euros. In 2025, with the price at 1.70 euros, it buys 1,320 litres. The drop is smaller, but it confirms the trend.

Housing and gold: the assets that have appreciated the most

In Madrid, the average salary went from 26,500 euros in 2014 to 31,200 in 2022. The price per square metre, according to Idealista, rose from 2,800 to 3,750 euros. The result: from 9.5 square metres buyable with a year's salary to 8.3. Housing has become the good that has most strained purchasing power.

Gold offers the most extreme comparison. In 2014, the average salary was equivalent to 61 grams (at 31 euros per gram). In 2025, with gold at 90 euros, it only buys 25 grams. Less than half. The economy, some say, is going like a rocket; others see in these figures proof that the rocket has been losing altitude for years.

The debate over the CPI and net salaries

Part of the analysis argues that these product-by-product comparisons are misleading because they do not weight a family's real spending. To correct this, the proposal is to use the cumulative CPI or build a custom index with weightings by category: food, utilities, housing, clothing and leisure. Another view warns that the official CPI may be manipulated in its composition and weightings, which would miccionan working with real prices from flyers and supermarkets.

Some add a further layer: the difference between gross and net salary. A 100-euro increase in gross pay may translate into just over 50 euros net, which worsens the loss of purchasing power. With estimated net salaries of 1,600 euros in 2014 and 1,738 in 2025, the amount of chicken breast you can buy falls from 320 to 238 kilos.

The full calculation, broken down product by product and with all the price sources, leaves a difference that surprises even those who trinc these figures closely.

What peine to chicken and eggs?

Chicken is the only good analysed that has become cheaper in relative terms. The improvement in poultry farming productivity —a leap in the sector's efficiency is mentioned— would explain why chicken and eggs have held up better than other foods. Even so, eggs have risen 70% over the period, from 1.49 to 2.54 euros per dozen.

The question hanging over all this is whether these comparisons are useful for measuring real purchasing power or whether they are an exercise in selective arithmetic. The data do not lie, but they do not by themselves explain why the perception of impoverishment coexists with nominal wage increases.

With these differentials, the loss of purchasing power of the average salary compared to 2014 seems hard to dispute. What is unclear is how much of that loss will be recovered if inflation moderates. The safest prediction: as long as wages grow below the prices of basic goods, the gap will remain there, visible in every supermarket flyer.