The jobs of director of engineering in the industrial sector and M&A analyst in the banking sector are both the highest paid, averaging € 73,963 and € 68,750 gross per year, respectively, according to Adecco’s 2020 Spring Professional Labor Market Guide.

The highest paid jobs are above the state average and can be increased with long experience. Thus, the director of engineering can reach 75,588 euros and the M&A analyst 95,000 euros if he has more than ten years of experience in this position.

This also affects the third highest paid salary, that of medical director, which averages 63,922 euros under normal conditions, but can rise to 95,740 if you reach the threshold of ten years of experience.
They are followed by the Technology Manager (59,981 euros and 70,948 euros with experience), the Human Resources Business Partner in Human Resources (59,763 euros and 66,836 euros with this extra experience) or the Logistics and Purchasing Operations Manager (58,183 euros; those with a longer career may receive 72,218 euros).

Covid's influence for the worse

The Adecco study also examines the impact of the crisis caused by the coronavirus pandemic and establishes that the construction, industrial and human resource sectors will suffer the greatest reductions in this context of economic depression.
Lack of activity (reductions in demand and production, closures in March and April) is a major blow to these sectors, as they will have to change their business model and soon anticipate a readjustment for all. According to Adecco, these are the sectors that will lead to wage cuts or at least a halt. The latter is the case for mass consumption, banking and insurance, and finance and law.

On the other hand, logistics, e-commerce and pharmacies can increase wages in very specific positions, as they are key in the pandemic. They are located on the other side of the scale, so they are sectors that will find opportunities to raise wages in specific profiles in this crisis due to the needs created by the pandemic. This includes logistics, e-commerce and the pharmaceutical industry, which have strengthened and emerged as a sector in which there has been no decline in activity in recent months.

"These are the only sectors and jobs that can increase wages in the coming months," says the Adecco report, "because they are key to the digital transformation of the sector, or because they are needed jobs in a health crisis."

Different salaries between communities

The pay gap between territories is not new in Spain, but in which regions is it earned more and where less? The highest average salaries correspond to the Basque Country (€ 28,470.94 per gross annual worker), Madrid (€ 27,010.93) and Navarre (€ 26,364.75), according to the National Statistics Institute's 'Structural Salary Survey'.
Together with the three communities mentioned above, the average annual earnings in Catalonia and the autonomous cities of Ceuta and Melilla were higher than the national average, at 24,009 euros per employee. At the other end of the table are Extremadura (19,947.80 euros), the Canary Islands (20,763.48 euros) and Murcia (21,510.59 euros).

The study also reflects that the most common annual salary in Spain in 2018 was 18,468.9 euros, which is an improvement of almost 970 euros in 2017 and exceeds the period 2013-2016 by almost 2,000 euros per year.