Eurostat: Real Household Income in the EU Edged Up 0.1% in the Second Quarter
Real per-capita household income in the European Union and the euro area rose by 0.1% in the second quarter of 2026. The household saving rate continued to decline.
Eurostat, the European Union's statistics office, reports that real household income per capita rose by 0.1% in both the EU and the euro area (the countries using the euro) in the second quarter of 2026. Consumption grew faster, while the household saving rate kept falling. In other words, households spent more and saved less as incomes edged higher.
In the first quarter, income growth was 0.3% in the EU and 0.1% in the euro area.
Consumption and savings
Real household consumption per capita increased by 0.4% in the EU and 0.3% in the euro area in the second quarter. In the first quarter, EU consumption had fallen by 0.1%, while the euro area figure was unchanged.
The household saving rate dropped by 0.3 percentage points over the quarter in the EU, to 13.9%, and by 0.2 points in the euro area, to 14.2%. The saving rate shows what share of disposable income households do not spend but set aside. A figure of 13.9% therefore means that, on average, EU households save about 14% of their disposable income.
Among countries with published data, the largest declines were in Finland (1.6 percentage points), Hungary (1.4) and Italy (1.2).
Investment
The household investment rate in the euro area was unchanged at 8.3%. In the EU it fell by 0.1 percentage point to 8%.
Country-level data
The Eurostat table covers 15 EU member states. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, along with several other countries, are not included. Eurostat explains that it does not publish figures for individual countries that account for less than 1% of the EU's total GDP.
