Eurostat – the statistics Office of the European Union – issued data on the third trimester 2007. Accordingly, the cost of manual labor in the thirteen Euro-zone Countries registered a 2.5% yearly increase compared to +2.4% of the previous trimester. In EU-27 annual development in the period July-September was 3.7%. As relates to Euroland, the increase in salary costs is especially linked to a 3% development of the building sector. Annual increases in the industry (+2,5%) and service (+2,4%) sectors were on the average. These figures reflect the general trend of the Member States where the manual labor costs registered a 5.3% increase in the building sector, 3.4% in the industry sector and 3.6% as relates to services. Latvia registered the highest increase (30%), followed by Romania, Estonia and Lithuania, above 20%. The cost per hour of manual labor underwent limited increase in Germany (+0,9%) and Finland (+1,9%). On the whole, in 2007 salaries underwent an average growth of 3.8% for the EU-27.
