Hungary’s average net wages are still very low: 712 euros per months!

Photo: MTI

The average gross wage for full-time workers in Hungary rose by an annual 12.1 percent to 345,860 forints (EUR 1,070) in February, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) said on Tuesday.

Net wages grew at the same pace, reaching 712 euros (229,997 forints).

Wage growth in Hungary has been in the double digits for two years, since the government, employers and unions agreed on a series of minimum wage increases paired with payroll tax cuts.

Calculating with twelve-month CPI of 3.1 percent in February, real wages increased by 8.7 percent.

Excluding the 111,600 Hungarians in fostered work programmes, the average gross wage rose by 11.2 percent to 356,572 forints, while net wages grew at the same rate to 237,120 forints.

Full-time fostered workers earned a gross 252 euros (81,339 forints) in February, 0.7 percent less than a year earlier.

KSH noted changes to its data sourcing first appearing in the January statistics: it is phasing out its practice of monthly data collection and instead getting data on wages and headcount from the National Tax and Customs Authority (NAV) and, in the case of the public sector, from the State Treasury. While reducing the data provision burden, the new sources bring a richer set of data, KSH said.

As we wrote on Monday, Hungary’s three-month rolling average jobless rate reached 3.6 percent in January-March, unchanged from the previous three-month period and edging down from 3.9 percent twelve months earlier, read more details HERE.

The data sources show the average gross monthly wage was highest in IT and communication, at 613,756 forints, and lowest in the healthcare and social services sector, at 228,158 forints.

Men employed full-time earned gross 376,900 forints on average during the period, while women earned 313,000 forints.

ING Bank senior analyst Péter Virovácz said that the agreement on minimum wage rises was the main driver of overall wage growth, but the narrower range of non-wage benefits with tax preferences was also a contributing factor, as employers made up for the discontinuation of some such benefits with higher remuneration.