Eurostat: Hungarian minimum wage is worth less than Romanian

While the net minimum wage in Hungary is still slightly higher than in Romania, as a result of price level differences, the latest figures reveal that Romanian wages now have a better purchasing power.

To compare the minimum wages in some East-Central European countries, Menedzsment Fórum used three different types of data from Eurostat: the gross minimum wage, purchasing power of the minimum gross salary, and the net minimum wage.

Gross minimum wage

According to the latest figures of Eurostat, the gross minimum wage in Hungary is EUR 452, compared to EUR 461 in Romania. In contrast, earlier this year, the Hungarian minimum salary was EUR 21 higher than the Romanian. As Menedzsment Fórum writes, the somewhat unexpected figures are the result of changes in the exchange rate against the euro: while in the case of Hungary, Eurostat calculated with a currency depreciation of 8%, the same value for Romania was 1.1%.

This has pushed Hungary back to the third last position in the EU: the gross minimum wage is only lower in Latvia (EUR 430) and Bulgaria (EUR 312).

It also means the worst performance among V4 countries: the gross minimum wage in Poland (EUR 583), Slovakia (EUR 580), and the Czech Republic (EUR 546) are all well above the Hungarian value.

Purchasing power of the gross minimum wage

This indicator is commonly used to compare the actual worth of salaries among countries. Although the method has received criticism from pro-government sources, there have been cases when it was the Hungarian government itself to use these numbers to highlight some “spectacular results” after a raise in minimum wages.