Improvement in Industrial Labour Cost Position

After having stagnated on average during the second half of the eighties unit labour costs in the Austrian manufacturing industry rose by 1.6 percent in 1991. Still, Austria's relative labour cost position in an international comparison improved as wages and salaries rose faster in competitor countries. In a common currency, the rise in unit labour costs was 3 percentage points smaller than on the average of Austria's major Western trading partners and by more than 2 percentage points smaller than in Western Germany.