Pay rises vs. inflation: what is really left of the tariff increases?

Since 2018 IG Metall has reached several collective agreements in the metal and electrical industry that raised the Eckentgelt (the reference monthly pay, explained here) step by step. The obvious question no tariff table answers for you: is the rise more than inflation? This article works it out on the full annual gross including every special payment, exactly as the salary calculator computes it for a real reference employee, against the official consumer price index.

CPI 2026: forecast (~2.1 % annual average), as no official annual figure exists yet. Through the last confirmed year 2025 the real change is -9.2 %.

One person, two numbers

To make the percentages tangible, we follow one concrete person through the years — not a table, but a human being with a real annual gross.

Take one concrete person: a skilled worker in Baden-Württemberg, graded at the Eckentgelt, with a 15 % performance bonus. Her collectively-agreed annual gross — base pay plus every special payment — developed like this:

2018 €50,763 Annual gross

+16.9 % → nominal

2026 €59,326 Annual gross

That sounds like a decent gain. But to afford in 2026 exactly what she could in 2018, she would need €64,424 — that is how much prices rose. So in real terms she is short by about €5,098 a year, a loss of purchasing power of -7.9 %.

There is no official annual consumer price index for 2026 yet; here the calculation uses a clearly-marked forecast. Through the last confirmed year 2025 the real loss is -9.2 %.

This is where the whole story sits: in nominal terms her pay rose clearly. But because prices rose even more, she can afford less on that higher pay than she could in 2018. The rest of the article explains how it came to that.

Round by round: how her annual gross grew

Her pay did not grow in one jump but in the individual bargaining rounds. The table below shows, for each round, her actual annual gross, the change versus the previous round, and the running comparison with prices:

Three phases stand out. From 2018 to 2023 her annual gross rose despite a frozen table — more on that shortly. The 2023, 2024 and 2025 rounds brought the actual table increases that clawed some ground back from prices. The 2026 round gains the most, because alongside the table the T-Zug B was raised sharply. Yet in every row the cumulative real column stays negative: the lead prices built up during the freeze years was never fully caught up.

Why a real loss remains anyway

The reason lies in timing, not in the percentages. The 2018 table stayed in force until June 2023 — straight through the inflation peak of 2022 and 2023 there was no table increase. While prices rose fastest, the table value stood still. That lead is exactly what the chart makes visible: the faint Eckentgelt line stays flat until 2023 while the price line pulls away.

Show as table

Rebased to 100 (2018): annual gross incl. special payments and prices (CPI) both rose — prices more. The bare Eckentgelt (faint) stayed flat until 2023: the table freeze, which the special payments partly cushioned. CPI 2026: forecast (~2.1 %), hollow marker.

Year	Annual gross (index)	Eckentgelt (index)	CPI (index)
2018	100	100	100
2023	107	105.2	119
2024	110.6	108.7	121.6
2025	112.8	110.8	124.3
2026	116.9	114.3	126.9 *

That her annual gross did not stand still in those years was down to the special payments. The 2021 round introduced the Transformationsgeld (T-Zug T) as new money — without a table increase — and the T-Zug B has more than doubled since 2018:

These special payments cushioned the loss but did not offset it. That is why the real figure ends up above the bare table — yet still in the red.

Two honest caveats

First, there is no official annual CPI yet for the running year 2026. We therefore use a clearly-marked forecast (annual average, per the EU Commission and the German Council of Economic Experts); every value resting on it is flagged in the tables. Measured only to the last confirmed year — with no forecast at all — the real loss is in fact larger, because the 2026 tariff round outpaces this year’s expected inflation.

Second, the calculation deliberately starts in 2018 without the Transformationsgeld, because it did not yet exist; counting it in 2018 by mistake would make the gain look artificially smaller.

The bare table, year by year

For the view of the Eckentgelt alone — without special payments — here is, year by year, the price index, the inflation rate, the tariff step (blank in the freeze years) and the nominal and real development of the table. The real loss here is larger than for annual gross above — precisely because the special payments are missing. Both figures are correct; they simply measure different things. (As an aside: not every region rounds the same way, Baden-Württemberg to the nearest 0.50 €, for instance — a detail, not a divergence.)

What this number does not say

This is the development of a tariff annual gross, not of an individual salary. Anyone promoted since 2018, moved into a higher pay grade, gained a tenure step, or receiving a Leistungszulage (performance bonus) above the regional average has not suffered the real loss shown above. Those individual effects sit outside the table and outside this calculation. To see the effect for your own salary, run it through the salary calculator with all special payments included.

And purchasing power is ultimately decided not by gross but by net pay: how much of a pay rise actually arrives after tax and social contributions is covered in What is left net? Bracket creep explained.