Higher wages for hairdressers make haircuts more expensive. In the hairdressing trade – as in many other trades – there is fierce competition for employees, jorg muller, chief executive of the central association of the hairdressing trade, told the deutsche presse-agentur.
"We simply have to pay more, offer more."The salon operators had to pass the higher wage costs on to the prices. Many salons have long paid more than the minimum wage, muller said.
And that was allowed to continue: "we believe that wages will simply continue to rise in the hairdressing trade in the medium term," because the competition for good heads in the trade is increasing. More and more young people are opting for academic professions, which means that "there is a shortage of employees in skilled trades, and a shortage always means an increase in prices".
According to data from the federal statistical office, prices for haircuts rose by 6.6 percent from 2015 to 2018. For women’s hairdressing services, the increase was as high as 7 percent, while prices for men rose by 5.9 percent.
According to the central association, the most recent figures on the average price of a wet haircut come from 2017: women had to pay an average of 27.20 euros, men 21.20 euros. The central association obtains these figures from the annual performance comparison analysis (EVA) commissioned by the cosmetics group wella. For the survey, around 550 salons regularly report, among other things, their prices and the expenditure of their customers.
Why these differences? Men went to the hairdresser more often, so overall they didn’t necessarily pay less than women, muller said. Furthermore: "a woman’s haircut – even if many don’t want to believe it – is simply more time-consuming, is cut differently"."If a woman is not ready to pay more than a man because she wears a short haircut anyway, she should say in the introductory conversation that she liked a man’s haircut, advises the expert. The hairdresser will usually point out that the cut may look different and the hair may fall differently. If the woman agrees, however, that it may be a classic men’s haircut, she also pays only the men’s price.
Demand also determines the price, said muller. And demand is on the rise: "just think of instagram."The photo network on the internet illustrates just how great the trend towards "visual self-optimization" is. "And that’s where hairdressing services will also be in ever greater demand," said muller. Increased demand in turn leads to more and more differentiated offers: people no longer just have their hair cut, but also have it dyed, colored, lengthened, thickened, pinned up, straightened, waved, styled, eyelashes colored, brows plucked – and of course every service has its price.
On average, however, women spend significantly more on a visit to the hairdresser than the cost of a wet haircut. The EVA figures from 2017 show that women spent an average of 53.79 euros per visit to the hairdresser’s, 2.4 percent more than in the previous year. The average man spends 20.99 euros at the hairdresser’s each time, 1.3 percent more than in 2016.