3  In the March projections, the energy and inflation compensatory fiscal measures are expected to have a downward impact of 0.3 percentage points on HICP inflation in 2023, and to have an upward impact of around 0.5 percentage points in 2024 and 0.2 percentage points in 2025 on their withdrawal. 3  Let me move now to the second input, underlying inflation dynamics, which serve as a complementary cross-check of our forecast. Core inflation, which excludes energy and food prices, is a standard indicator of underlying inflationary pressures. Over 2022, core inflation averaged 3.9%, and reached 5.7% in March 2023, an all-time high. Meanwhile, the core inflation outlook for 2023 has been successively revised upwards in recent staff projections exercises, from 2.8% in June 2022, to 3.4% in September, 4.2% in December and 4.6% in the most recent exercise in March of this year. In the current environment, the indirect effects from past commodity price increases, which have been much larger than expected, are a first key driver of core inflation.
13  Ferrucci, Jiménez-Rodríguez and Onorante (2012, , "Food price pass-through in the Euro Area: Non-linearities and the role of the common agricultural policy" International Journal of Central Banking ) find asymmetries between positive and negative shocks in the food inputs, Borrallo, Cuadro and Pérez (2023, forthcoming) confirm these results for the euro area by extending the sample to the present time. In the case of oil, Kilian and Vigfusson (2011, Quantitative Economics, "Are the responses of the U.S. economy asymmetric in energy price increases and decreases?") show that there are no significant asymmetries in the United States. However, Garzón and Hierro (2021, Economic Modelling " Asymmetries in the transmission of oil price shocks to inflation in the Eurozone") find that asymmetries do exist in the euro area. 14  According to the ECB's March forecast, nominal wage growth, as measured by compensation per employee, will increase from 4.6% in 2022 to 5,3% in 2023, before declining to 4,4% in 2024 and 3,6% in 2025. 15  This has happened in a context of a sharp increase in public employment, whose growth has accounted for about half of total employment growth since the end of 2019. 16  The ECB experimental tracker of negotiated wages shows a clear upward shift in wage increases agreed for 2022 and 2023. Contract negotiations during 2022 delivered wage increases around 4,4% and 4,8% for 2022 and 2023 respectively, with higher increases the more recent the agreement is.