Average net income per person in Spain 2000-2019

Spain’s average income per capita has increased every year since 2014, when the Sovereign Debt Crisis caused a recession. In 2019, the figure amounted to 11,680 euros after taxes, up 2 percent from the previous year. Though this is the highest level to date, the increase is only slightly faster than inflation.

Age and regional differences

The net income per person broken down into age groups shows that young workers (aged between 16 and 29) earn 1,335 euros less annually than the national average and nearly three thousand euros bellow the average income of workers above 65. This is to be expected, as workers gain experience and expertise as they age. However, regional differences are more remarkable. In the autonomous community with the highest average annual net income, the Basque Country, that figure exceeded 15,000 euros in 2019, while Extremadura, which ranked as the region with the lowest average income in 2019, registered an average of approximately 8,800 euros per that year.

Disposable income

The income which remains once taxes and social security charges are deduced is known as disposable income. As of 2020, household savings as share of total disposable income in Spain stood at 14.8 percent. However, savings in relation to disposable income are is expected to diminish in the following years. During the last decade, and particularly throughout the Spanish Sovereign Debt Crisis, the country’s households suffered from high rates of indebtedness in relation to gross disposable income. At the peak in 2013, the indebtedness ratio, the ratio of debt to annual income, exceeded 130 percent. The ratio has since decreased and stood at 101.34 percent in the third quarter of 2020.