The average nominal wages in Romania rose by 15% YoY nominally to RON 4,265 (EUR 864) in January, fully matching the rise in consumer prices after lagging behind inflation for most of 2022, according to data released by the statistics office INS.

The nominal growth thus nearly matched the 15.1% YoY inflation in the month, bringing the real wages back to the level of January 2022.

This is perhaps one of the factors still not strong enough to explain the buoyant and unexpected 5.8% YoY rise in retail sales (+9.1% YoY for non-food sales) in the first month of 2023 – the strongest annual growth since December 2021.

The distribution of the growth may be another factor: the low wages have increased more.

In the manufacturing sector, the nominal wages increased by 20.5% YoY in January to RON 3,875 (EUR 787), resulting in a +4.7% real YoY growth.

iulian@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: Dreamstime.com)