Statec calculated employer costs based on the gross annual costs of employment, including social contributions, divided by the number of hours worked. Spread across the workforce, it placed the average hourly cost to employers at €38.70.

The report observes the hourly cost is higher in larger companies than smaller ones.

The findings were based on the CMO survey. Compared to the previous survey, conducted in 2012, there was an average cost increase of 2.34% per year.

The growth was even higher in the financial sector (+3.8%), sales (+3.3%) and IT and communications (+3.1%). At the other end of the scale, the catering and hotel sector recorded cost increase of just 0.7% per year. Gross salaries represented 86.5% of workforce costs.