The labor costs per hour in the euro zone increased by 2.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2018 compared to a year earlier. The European statistics agency Eurostat announced this.

The increase was also 2.3 percent in the third quarter. A 2.8 percent increase in labor costs was measured for the entire European Union.

Labor costs rose most strongly in Romania (13.1 percent), followed by Latvia (11.8 percent) and Portugal (10.3 percent). Malta (minus 0.5 percent) was the only country where costs went down.