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

by THEFUTURE.TEAM

November 7, 2025

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.

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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.

The Future Forbes Realty Global Properties

by News Editor

August 24, 2026

Courts Are Still Applying Old Copyright Rules To AI

AI companies train models on enormous amounts of published material, including books, articles and academic research. Whether using that content without authors’ permission violates copyright law remains unresolved.

Much of the debate centres on fair use, which allows copyrighted material to be used without permission in certain circumstances. Courts consider factors such as the purpose of the use, how much material was involved and its impact on the original market.

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Anthropic Case Sets An Important Precedent

A major case involving Anthropic and a group of authors provided one of the clearest rulings so far. Judge William Alsup found that using copyrighted books to train AI models was lawful, comparing the process to people reading and studying literature before creating something new.

Anthropic was nevertheless ordered to pay $1.5 billion in a settlement. The penalty concerned books the company had obtained from illegal online libraries rather than the AI training itself.

For AI companies, that distinction could prove significant because it separates studying copyrighted material from directly copying it.

Competition Could Be The Key Issue

A case involving Thomson Reuters and Ross Intelligence offers a different perspective. A court ruled that Ross could not claim fair use after using Reuters’ copyrighted material to develop a competing AI-powered legal research platform.

The decision suggests courts may be less willing to consider AI training fair use when copyrighted content is used to build a product that directly competes with the original.

For authors, an unresolved question is whether AI-generated content should be considered competition for the works used to train these models.

The Law Has Yet To Catch Up

US copyright law predates generative AI by decades, leaving courts to apply old principles to new technology. Questions also remain over copyright protection for AI-generated works. In Thaler v. Perlmutter, a court ruled that material created entirely by AI cannot receive copyright protection.

Major AI companies remain involved in copyright litigation, and different courts could reach different conclusions. For now, there is no universal rule: the legality of AI training will depend on the circumstances of each case and how courts ultimately interpret copyright and fair use.