Nominal and real wages in the Republic of Serbia 2001-2020

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to present, decompose and analyze time series of average gross and net nominal and real wages in the Republic of Serbia. The paper presents monthly time series of wages for the period from January 2001 to December 2020. Time time series of wages are seasonally adjusted using the software JDemetra +, ver. 2.1.0 and the X13-ARIMA program. Real gross and net wages were obtained by dividing the series of nominal average gross and net wages by the retail price index (until January 2009) and then by the consumer price index (since January 2009). It has been noticed that there are three periods in the movement of time series of wages. In the period before the Global Financial and Economic Crisis (2000-2008), nominal and real wages recorded a strong upward trend. In the post-crisis period, from 2009 to 2017, there was a slowdown in wage growth. In that period, nominal wages were rising, and as a consequence of inflation, real wages stagnated. In the third period, from 2018-2020, due to wage growth in the public sector and low and stable inflation rates, both nominal and real wages have been growing. The beginning of each of these three periods coincides with changes in the methodology of calculating the average wage, which affected the appearance and variability of time series of wages, and especially the seasonal component in the series.