This business district often finds itself searching for the waiters, cooks, and bartenders they seem to be missing. There is a restoration of the economic sector that raises wages for its workers significantly. Rome was not built in a day, and even with decades of low pay, the hospitality industry keeps thriving. The sector has faced a stubborn reality where the combination of low wages and seasonal demand has long shaped recruitment and retention. Meanwhile, the worst paid jobs within the sector tend to be linked to positions like horticulture as well as some frontline service roles.
According to the latest labor cost survey released by INE in 2022, salaries for food and beverage service professionals rose by 22.5 percent compared to 2021 and are 9 percent higher than just before the covid outbreak. A waiter’s salary continues to lag behind the national average, earning about half of what the typical Spanish worker makes. On average, hospitality employees earn around EUR 13,386 gross per year, which breaks down to roughly EUR 956 gross per month over 14 payments. By comparison, the economy-wide average salary sits at about EUR 25,353 gross annually, or around EUR 1,810 gross monthly in 14 payments, reflecting an overall 4.5 percent increase from the previous year.
Salaries in the hospitality industry often fall below the interprofessional minimum wage, largely due to a high prevalence of part-time contracts. That means not every waiter earns less than the minimum wage, but many work fewer hours than a standard 40-hour week. The government’s policy to raise the minimum wage has pushed the monthly payroll in the hotel sector to stay below the new thresholds since 2018, despite higher annual earnings for some job roles. This makes the wage landscape for hospitality workers a mix of modest steadiness and gradual uplift as the broader economy tightens.
Hospitality, cross; computing face
Hoteliers are beginning to push salaries higher in order to attract talent, but the challenge of drawing skilled professionals from other industries has persisted for years. Across Spain and much of the West, companies have maintained a quiet, ongoing competition to recruit computer scientists. In industry chatter, these workers are often labeled as technological talent or technicians rather than merely highly skilled staff.
The race to attract and retain professionals in cybersecurity, data engineering, and software development continues to shape compensation. As firms demand programmers, system designers, and analysts who can build and optimize complex systems, they are increasingly willing to offer more lucrative salaries and robust benefits. Payrolls for computer scientists now run roughly 20 percent higher than before the pandemic. The typical annual gross salary in this field stands around EUR 32,521, which breaks down to about EUR 2,322 gross monthly over 14 payments. The broader economy still averages around EUR 25,353 gross per year, or EUR 1,810 per month in 14 payments, with growth of about eight percent since the covid period.
Despite these rising wages, the overall labor market remains dynamic. The Ministry of Inclusion and Social Security has noted, in its June employment data, that employment growth remains energetic in high-added-value sectors such as Informatics and Telecommunication. In these areas, participation has increased by more than twenty percent versus the pre-pandemic period, underscoring a persistent demand for skilled professionals. At the same time, the trend shows that many companies are expanding workforces while offering stronger pay, signaling a broader shift toward more competitive compensation across both hospitality and technology sectors.