Wages in Romania have seen a spectacular evolution after the country joined the European Union, with a notable rise in the last 8 years. In nominal terms, the average monthly net salary has more than tripled, from EUR 312 in 2007 to EUR 1,045 in 2024, according to analysts from the Romanian Economic Monitor (RoEM) – UBB FSEGA, a research project of the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration at Babeș-Bolyai University in Cluj-Napoca.
Even when taking inflation into account, which erodes purchasing power, the increase tops 122% in the average net salary.
"In Romania, the average monthly net salary surpassed the EUR 1,000 threshold for the first time at the end of 2023. And yet, despite these positive developments, a large part of Romanians have a different perception of the evolution of their own monthly income and do not feel a significant improvement in their standard of living. One explanation for these divergent perceptions is the economic inequality within the country,” says Levente Szász, Vice-Rector of UBB Cluj-Napoca, coordinator of the RoEM team.
According to him, social tensions become more pronounced and can even jeopardize the country’s future economic development if a large part of society benefits less from economic increases than others.
The analysis conducted by the RoEM team of economists on monthly wage inequality indicates a downward trend at the national level.
In a previous study, RoEM specialists highlighted the existence of "three Romanias" from the perspective of the population’s economic well-being:
"Inequality reduction is very slow: if in 2007 about 71% of employees in Romania earned below the national average, in 2023, the value is only slightly lower, at 67%. This 4 percentage point decrease does not represent a relevant improvement of the situation, especially since this evolution took place over a 17-year period," says Ottó Csiki, researcher in the RoEM team.
Nevertheless, the inequality index, calculated as the income of the top 20% of the population compared to the bottom 20% (top 20% vs bottom 20%), shows a significant decrease in inequality: if this ratio was 8.1 in 2007 (the highest-income earners made 8.1 times more than those with the lowest incomes in the country), its value nearly halved by 2024, reaching 4.6.
"In general, the data show that the share of each segment of the population with monthly incomes above the median has become increasingly smaller from the total income achieved nationwide, while the same share for population segments with low incomes has started to gradually increase. This decrease in income inequality is more pronounced in the last four years," says Ottó Csiki.
Despite this, in this European ranking made for the year 2024, Romania is around the middle of the hierarchy, tied with France, surpassing 11 countries where income inequality among the population is higher.
Among the countries with the highest values of the inequality indicator are Bulgaria (7.0), Lithuania (6.3), and Latvia (6.3), while at the top of the ranking are Czechia (3.3), Slovenia (3.4), and Belgium (3.5).
"It is also important to highlight that in 2015 Romania was still the country with the highest income inequality in the entire EU, with a value of 8.3 for the ratio between the incomes of the two 20% population segments with the highest and lowest monthly earnings, respectively. As such, the progress in reducing inequalities can be considered remarkable, especially in recent years, with Romania surpassing several European countries. However, this improvement is a very recent one," concludes the coordinator of the RoEM team.
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