Breaking news

ECB Wage Tracker Forecasts Slower Growth While Cyprus Data Highlights Persistent Inequality

The European Central Bank’s latest wage tracker data, updated through September, signals a notable slowdown in negotiated wage growth moving into 2025. The tracker, rooted in active collective bargaining agreements, recorded a rise of 4.7% in 2024 with smoothed one-off payments. Projections for 2025 indicate a deceleration to 3.2%, based on a slightly reduced employee coverage of 48.7%, compared to 50.6% in the previous year.

Analyzing The Variations

Diverse methodological approaches yield varied outcomes. A version that includes unsmoothed one-off payments suggests a 4.9% growth in 2024 dropping to 3.0% in 2025. Meanwhile, a tracker that excludes one-off payments shows more resilient growth, from 4.2% in 2024 rising to 3.9% in 2025. The ECB attributes these trends, in part, to the mechanical effects of substantial one-off payments in 2024 and the advancement of wage increases in certain sectors during that period.

Forward-Looking Data For 2026

Recent forward-looking figures for the third quarter of 2026 present a mixed picture. The headline wage tracker, with smoothed one-off payments, recorded 2.2%, up from 1.8% in the early half of the year. Conversely, the unsmoothed figure slipped from 2.5% to 2.2%, while the tracker excluding one-off payments declined slightly to 2.4% from 2.6%. Notably, employee coverage fell to 19.4% in Q3 2026, a marked decrease from 31.0% in H1 2026 and 47.2% in Q4 2025, underscoring shifts in the dataset’s representativeness.

Cyprus Wages: Growth Amid Inequality

Provisional data from the Cyprus Statistical Service illustrates a continued upward trend in wages. In the second quarter of 2025, average gross monthly earnings reached €2,476—a 4.2% increase from the previous year—following a 2024 average of €2,483. Despite this overall growth, wage inequality remains a pressing issue. The median wage for 2024 was only €1,881, significantly lower than the average, highlighting persistent disparities.

Persistent Gender And Incomes Disparities

The gender pay gap is a continuing challenge. In Q2 2025, males earned an average of €2,656 while females earned €2,251. However, a higher year-on-year increase for women (4.7% compared to 3.8% for men) may signal a gradual narrowing of the gap. In terms of income distribution, 40% of employees earned between €1,500 and €2,999, with 36.1% earning less than €1,500. Only 5.1% of workers reached the €6,000 or more bracket.

Sectoral Insights And National Disparities

Further analysis by Cystat reveals that non-Cypriot nationals are overrepresented in both the lowest and highest wage brackets—48.7% earn less than €1,500 and 7.7% earn €6,000 or more—reflecting a bimodal distribution in job roles. Sectoral performance shows the Information and Communication industry leading salary growth with an 8.1% increase in 2024, while financial and insurance activities enjoyed the highest average earnings at €4,710.

Webflow Strengthens Marketing Suite With Acquisition Of AI-Powered Vidoso

Strategic Acquisition For Enhanced Marketing

Webflow, a leading software platform for website building and hosting, has acquired AI-driven content-generation platform Vidoso to advance its suite of marketing offerings. The move signals Webflow’s strategic shift from being recognized solely as a website builder and CMS provider to emerging as a holistic, agentic marketing platform.

Integrating AI With Content Creation

Vidoso, founded in 2024, uses large language models to help organizations generate marketing materials such as images, presentations, video clips, blog posts and social media content. One of the platform’s features allows users to convert long-form content, including keynote presentations or panel discussions, into shorter formats such as video clips and blog posts. Following the acquisition, Vidoso’s four-person team will join Webflow, and the technology is expected to be integrated into the company’s broader content and marketing tools

Driving Operational Efficiency In A Competitive Market

Webflow has raised more than $330 million in funding and has previously expanded its marketing capabilities through acquisitions and partnerships. Earlier initiatives included the acquisition of personalization platform Intellimize and the launch of integrations with advertising platforms such as Google Ads. The company is operating in an increasingly competitive market as startups develop AI tools for marketing automation. Competitors in this space include companies such as Kana, Hightouch and Blueshift. Webflow CEO Linda Tong said the company aims to build a platform that connects brand management, demand generation, product marketing and content development within a single system.

Closing The Gap With Branded AI Content

Vidoso’s CEO, Sharad Verma, explained that earlier iterations of AI delivered generic content that lacked alignment with individual brand systems. “Frontier models are trained on the average of the internet, not on the specifics of your brand,” Verma stated, emphasizing how Vidoso’s platform addresses this shortfall by ensuring consistent, governed, and production-ready content that aligns with existing marketing workflows.

A Forward-Looking Vision

Webflow views the acquisition as part of a broader shift toward AI-assisted marketing tools that combine content creation with performance insights. According to Tong, integrating these capabilities into a single platform allows companies to create marketing assets while analyzing their performance and refining future campaigns.

Uol
The Future Forbes Realty Global Properties
Aretilaw firm
eCredo

Become a Speaker

Become a Speaker

Become a Partner

Subscribe for our weekly newsletter