The crisis, in five goods

What the wage buys, 2011 = 100

Net minimum wage, after contributions and before income tax. Each good in its own unit, all from a common start.

All five fell. Four bottomed out during the crisis and climbed back, by +11 to +40 points; petrol and automotive diesel now stand above 2011. The pita gyro's lowest point is 2025, which is now, at 52: recovery 0.

Dashed: 2026 has not closed. Heating oil and electricity do not have it yet, and their lines stop.

Gyronomics · gyronomics.gr · 2026.09.16-reproducible-views · CC BY 4.0

How to read it

• Above 100 means more. Not cheaper: more. Petrol at 115 means the same wage buys more litres than in 2011, because it rose faster than the pump price. It does not mean petrol is cheap.
• The unit is a quantity. Each good is measured in what is actually bought: pita gyros, litres, kilowatt hours per month. The page does not publish prices, it publishes what the wage buys. The plain quantities are in the table.
• The wage is one. The same net minimum wage the Index runs, after contributions and before income tax, annual income over twelve. A shared numerator on every line, which is what makes the lines comparable.
• The 100 is not a judgement. 2011 was not a year of plenty and we do not say it was. It is the last full year before the minimum wage was cut, which makes it a measuring point. What changes if another year is picked is measured below.
• Dashes and asterisks. A dashed line means a year that has not closed, so the number will move. An asterisk means two official sources report different changes for that year, and we do not choose silently.

Trough and return

Everything starts at 100 in 2011. This is where each good hit its lowest point, and how far it has come back from there by 2025.

Recovery is how many points each good climbed from its own low to today. An asterisk marks a year where the two official sources disagree.

In plain quantities: in 2011 the wage bought 414 gyros a month, today 216. Petrol: 435 → 502 litres. Automotive diesel: 493 → 570 litres. Heating oil: 787 → 741 litres. Electricity: 5,826 → 3,774 kWh.

The same thing, in euros

The index says 52 and that hurts nobody. The same measurement in euros: for the wage to buy the 414 pita gyros of 2011, at the current price it would have to be 1,759.50 € net instead of 924.46 €.

The same arithmetic runs backwards, which is why all five are here: for petrol the required wage comes out lower than the actual one, because the wage rose faster than the pump. The same tool, for any year you like, is on the home page.

Each good is measured in the last year it has a price, with that year stated beside it: not all of them reach 2026.

Why the lines separate

The wage is one and shared: from 2011 to 2025 it rose +22.0%. So what separates the goods is the price of each, and the last column is the whole explanation of this page.

Over the same years petrol rose +5.7% and the pita gyro +133.8%. It is not that the wage behaved differently towards the goods. The goods behaved differently towards the same wage.

The price column is not read from a source, it comes out of the identity quantity = wage ÷ price. That is why it cannot disagree with the other two columns.

Two crises, different goods

The troughs do not fall in the same year, and that is where it shows that this is not one event but two. The fuels found their lowest point during austerity. Electricity found its own much later, in the energy crisis. The pita gyro has not found one yet.

• 2012 Petrol trough at 75, today 115
• 2012 Automotive diesel trough at 76, today 116
• 2013 Heating oil trough at 56, today 94
• 2022 Electricity trough at 54, today 65
• 2025 Pita gyro trough at 52, today 52

That is why the start of the window matters. A base in the years just before the energy crisis would show only the second one, and would put the fuels' trough in 2022, years after their real one.

The 2012 drop is one event

All five lines fall together from 2011 to 2012, and it looks like five price stories. It is one: the minimum wage was cut by −20.8% and the wage is the numerator of every line. The identity is quantity = wage ÷ price, so whatever the wage does not explain the price does, with no remainder.

The wage column is identical for everyone, because it is the same wage. What separates the goods is the last column: the pita gyro fell −22.2% with its own price almost still, +1.9%, while heating oil fell −37.6% because its price rose +27.0% within one year, the largest move of the five. Why it rose that much is not measured here and is not claimed.

Where 2026 is heading

The table stops at 2025, because that is where every good's closed years stop. But 2025 happens to be the best year for fuels in the whole period, and a picture that ends there suggests they are still climbing. They are not.

• Pita gyro 52 → 53 (216 → 218 gyros a month)
• Petrol 115 → 109 (502 → 474 litres a month)
• Automotive diesel 116 → 103 (570 → 508 litres a month)

Petrol and automotive diesel enter with 37 weeks of prices: fewer weeks, of the same kind. The pita gyro enters with the price being measured now, which will be measured again before December. All three are dashed because they will move.

The year's mean is not the current price. The figures above are the mean of 37 weeks of 2026, which started far cheaper than they are ending. The last week in the bulletin, 2026-09-14, gives: petrol 2.158 €, diesel 2.122 €. On those prices alone the indices become: petrol 98 instead of 109, diesel 88 instead of 103. The line keeps the mean, because that is how every other year of it is measured, but the current price is written here so that nobody has to guess it. The pita gyro does not have this problem: its 2026 price is the price being measured now, not a mean of the months so far. In the open year the two series are not built the same way.

Why two are missing. Heating oil is measured on heating months only, so the open year does not hold fewer weeks of the same kind: it holds the January-April leg alone and is missing the whole autumn one. Across closed years the two legs sit −15.4% apart in 2014 and +42.9% apart in 2005, so half a season is not a partial sample but a different one. Electricity comes from a half-yearly series and 2026 has not been published. In both cases the line stops rather than being extended.

If the starting year changes

A base year is an argument. Pick a year when a good was expensive and it looks cheap forever after. So the page tries every other starting year the data allows, from 2008 to 2011.

The levels move a lot: petrol lands anywhere from 73 to 115 depending on the base, and anyone after a flattering number can find one. The structure does not move at all: under every base the gyro's trough is 2025 and its recovery is zero, while the other four bottomed out earlier and came back. That is the finding, and the base year did not choose it.

2011 was chosen because it is the last full year before the minimum wage was cut, and the wage is the numerator of every line. An earlier base is not available: the electricity series starts in 2008.

The asterisk on electricity

The two official sources report different changes for the same years. The likeliest cause is how each treats the bill subsidies, but this has not been verified in either methodology and is not claimed here.

The line on this page follows the price series, because only that one gives euro per kWh and therefore kWh per month. What matters is that the conclusion does not hang on the choice: electricity is one of four comparators, and however deep its trough, the pita gyro remains the only good that did not recover.

What would change the conclusion

A conclusion that cannot fall is not a measurement. These are the three things that would bring this one down, and each has a check that falls with it.

• The trough of the gyro. It sits in 2025 at 52, and the open 2026 is running at 53. The distance is one point: if 2026 closes where it stands, "has not recovered at all" becomes "recovered by one point, against 11 to 40 for the others". Closer than it sounds, which is why it is written here.
• The recovery of the others. The claim says four came back. If any of them sets a new low in the last closed year, it stops holding. The closest: Electricity, a recovery of 11 points from its 2022 trough.
• The indifference to the base. The page rests on the structure not changing with the base. If any of the starting years produces a different order of troughs or a different sign of recovery, the check falls and the base section must be rewritten rather than quietly dropped.

The consistency check runs on every publication and lets no figure on the page differ from the data. The three above go beyond that: they are not about being wrong, they are about the world changing.

What this page does not say

• It is not the cost of living. Five goods are not a basket, and rent and food, the large ones, are missing. What the Index does not measure.
• A common start hides the levels. The 100 does not mean the goods were equally affordable in 2011. It only means we measure from there. The plain quantities are in the table and in the downloadable file.
• The dashed part is not a result. 2026 is open: it is drawn so that 2025 does not look like the end of the story, but it does not enter any trough, recovery or table, and it will move before December.
• Subsidies are missing. For fuels the price is what was charged at the pump, while part was refunded separately. For electricity the treatment of subsidies is exactly what separates the two sources.
• The Index does not change. The published Index remains the minimum wage in pita gyros. This page only sets other goods beside it.

Sources and limits by good: Fuels · Mean and median · Minimum Wage