CCOO has denounced this Friday that corporate profit margins have increased by 66% since 2019, in a context in which workers, who have barely managed to rebuild the purchasing power damaged by the inflation crisis of 2022, are again facing a new wave of price rises.
In this way, the union emphasizes that companies have “taken advantage of successive inflation crises” to preserve and even expand their margins, shifting “a large part of the cost of the crisis” onto the workers.
This is one of the central conclusions of the report 'Corporate margins, prices and wages', prepared by the Economic Office of CCOO, which studies the recent evolution of corporate profit margins and their link to the rise in the price of essential goods and services for citizens.
According to data from the observatory, the gross operating result of the set of companies examined has increased from 207 billion euros in 2019 to 342 billion in average annual figures up to the second quarter of 2026. At the same time, the corporate margin on sales has moved from 11% to 12.8%, which, according to the union, shows that companies have not only preserved their margins in the face of rising costs, but have managed to widen them.
The union organization stresses that inflation also constitutes a distributional conflict in which “it is decided who bears the increase in prices and who benefits from it”. In this line, it points out that the wars in Ukraine and Iran have generated “significant increases” in energy costs, but their consequences have been intensified by the behavior of those companies with the ability to set prices in their markets.
According to the report, this scenario has caused a “strong erosion” of workers’ purchasing power and, although the increases agreed in collective bargaining agreements, the increase in the SMI and the creation of employment made it possible to restore it at the beginning of 2026, the new phase of inflation “threatens to derail that recovery”.
Housing, energy and hospitality concentrate the largest increases
The study details that margin increases are especially pronounced in activities linked to the main household expenditures. In the area of housing, the margins of financial institutions have shot up by 93%, those of construction companies have advanced by 90%, and those of real estate agencies have grown by 34%.
In the fuel business, the profit margins of oil companies have practically quintupled (+374%) since 2019, while the final price of fuels has increased by 93% up to September 2026.
For its part, the profit margins of the set of companies in the food supply chain have increased by 51% since 2019, while food prices have risen by 39% over the same period.
The report also highlights increases in profit margins in the electricity and gas sector, of 73%, as well as in hospitality, where the widening exceeds 90%, compared with an upturn in sector prices of 31%.
Given this situation, CCOO calls on the workforce to back the general strike called for November 11, with which the aim is that economic growth and corporate profits are also translated into wage improvements, more affordable prices, effective rights to decent housing, and enough and quality public services.