The average net monthly salary in Romania amounted to over five thousand Romanian lei in 2023, having increased by nearly 15.5 percent compared to the previous year. Furthermore, the net minimum wage increased as well, set at 1,863 Romanian lei in 2023.

Average net earnings in the European Union was 26,136 Euros for a single person with no children in 2022, while for a couple with children who both worked it was 55,573 Euros. Among countries in Europe, Switzerland was the country with the highest net earnings in 2022, followed by Iceland, Luxembourg, and Norway. The lowest net earnings were found in Bulgaria and Romania, where a single person without children earned on average less than 9,000 Euros in 2022.

This statistic shows a forecast for the development of the real wages in the member states of the European Union in 2024. In 2024, the real wages in Romania are forecasted to increase by 5.9 percent compared to the previous year.

Denmark is the European country with the highest top statutory income tax rate as of 2024, with the Nordic country having a top taxation band of 55.9 percent. Other countries with high taxes on top earners included France, with a top rate of 55.4 percent, Austria, with a top rate of 55 percent, and Spain, with a top rate of 54 percent. Many countries in Europe have relatively high top income tax rates when compared with other regions globally, as these countries have relatively generous social systems funded by tax incomes. This is particularly the case in Western, Northern, and Central Europe, where the social state is generally stronger. On the other hand, formerly communist countries in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region tend to have lower top income tax rates, with Romania and Bulgaria having the lowest rates in Europe in 2024, with their top income tax brackets both being only 10 percent. These countries often have less well-developed social systems, as well as the fact that they must compete to retain their workers against other European countries with higher average wages. In spite of low-income taxes, these countries may take other deductions from employee's wages such as pension and healthcare payments, which may not be included in income taxation as in other European countries.

The house price to income index in Europe declined in almost all European countries in 2023, indicating that income grew faster than house prices. Portugal, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands led the house price to income index ranking in 2023, with values exceeding 125 index points. Romania, Bulgaria, and Finland were on the other side of the spectrum, with less than 100 index points. The house price to income ratio is an indicator for the development of housing affordability across OECD countries and is calculated as the nominal house prices divided by nominal disposable income per head, with 2015 chosen as a base year. A ratio higher than 100 means that the nominal house price growth since 2015 has outpaced the nominal disposable income growth, and housing is therefore comparatively less affordable. In 2023, the OECD average stood at 117.4 index points.

According to European Commission forecasts, Bulgaria will achieve the highest real wages and salary growth in 2025 (+8.7 percent), followed Romania and Lithuania.

The minimum gross wage per hour in Poland as of July 2024 amounted to 28.1 zloty. As of January 2025, the minimum hourly wage will increase to 30.5 zloty gross, an increase of 10.1 percent. Purchasing power standards (PPS) in the CEE region From 2009 to 2023, almost every country in Central and Eastern Europe experienced increased GDP per capita in purchasing power standards. For example, Czechia's GDP per capita amounted to 91 PPS last year, reaching the highest level among Central and Eastern European countries but lower than the EU average. A similar situation occurred in Poland, one of the countries experiencing an increase in GDP per capita, amounting to 79 PPS. On the other hand, the highest actual individual consumption per capita expressed in purchasing power standards in the CEE region was recorder in Lithuania, Slovenia, and Romania. However, all Central and Eastern European countries reached actual individual consumption per capita below the EU average. Inflation’s effect on Poles Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, inflation has increased drastically. That caused people to look at their expenditure of salaries more responsibly but also made them want to earn more. From 2021 to 2023, a fair share of Poles felt that food prices and fuel increased the most over the year. In 2022, due to the rising of some products and services in recent months in Poland, 75 percent of people bought less and looked for cheaper products during daily shopping. Moreover, around 60 percent of Poles gave up higher expenses to put them off for later. Inflation causes people to look for cheaper products. However, only about 25 percent of Poles had higher trust in the promotions due to inflation.

According to European Commission forecasts, Bulgaria will achieve the highest nominal wages and salary growth in 2025 (+10.9 percent), followed by Romania and Hungary.

In the shown Central and Eastern European countries, senior AI and blockchain developers had the highest annual salaries as of 2023. At the same time, software developers working in Poland, Romania, and Czechia had the highest salaries overall.

Portugal, the Netherlands and Austria are among the countries where house prices grew the most in comparison to income since 2015. In the fourth quarter of 2024, the house price to income ratio in the Netherlands and Austria exceeded 120 index points, indicating that since 2015, house price growth has outpaced income growth by 20 percent. In Portugal, the index amounted to 153 index points in the same period. This was not the case in all countries in the ranking: In Finland, Bulgaria, and Romania, the opposite trend was observed, showing that incomes grew faster than house prices. The house price to income ratio is calculated as the nominal house prices divided by nominal income per capita, with 2015 chosen as the base year of the index. The ratio signifies the development of hosing affordability, with higher figures meaning housing is more unaffordable. There are other indices, such as RHPI (or house price indices corrected by inflation rates) which look at this as well.

Romania was forecast to have the highest real salary increase in the last quarter of 2024 of the 34 countries included. The salary increase in the European country was forecast to reach 17 percent. Croatia and Serbia followed behind. On the other hand, Iceland and Japan were forecast to have a real wage growth of only 1.1 percent.

Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita is a measure of economic production, which takes the entire output of a national economy during a year and divides it by the population of that country. In the European Union, Luxembourg, Ireland, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Austria come out on top as the countries which produced the most per capita in 2023. Europe's richest countries benefit from multinational companies Many criticisms have been made of using GDP per capita as away to judge a country's economic wealth in recent years, as global capital flows have come to distort the statistics and to give a warped impression of different countries' wealth. This is most notably the case for Ireland and for Luxembourg, which while certainly high-income countries, have experienced dramatic booms in their GDP over the past two decades due to the accounting practices of the large multinational corporations which have their European headquarters in these member states, such as Facebook and Apple in Dublin, and Amazon in Luxembourg. Will the poorest countries converge towards the EU average? At the bottom of the list, two of the most recent member states of the EU, Romania and Bulgaria, come last in terms of GDP per capita. Whether these countries will be able to capitalize on their relatively low-wages to spur economic growth and experience the convergence towards the older member states of the union shown by countries such as Estonia, Czechia, and Lithuania, remains a pressing issue for these poorer member states.

According to the source, the Romanian banking system recorded a 43 percent profit growth in the first half of 2023 compared to 2022. Also, the Romanian banking system had tripled the profitability compared to the European Union average in 2022.

In 2023 Germany's contribution to the budget of the European Union was more than 29 billion Euros, the highest of any EU member state. France was the next highest contributor at 26 billion Euros. followed by Italy at 16 billion Euros and Spain at 11.1 billion Euros. The country which contributed the lowest amount was the small island nation of Malta, at 151.9 million Euros. Largest economies in Europe The amount which EU member states contribute to the EU budget is heavily linked to the size of its economy. Germany, for example, has the largest economy in the whole of the EU, with Gross domestic product reaching almost 4.12 trillion Euros in 2023. France and Italy have the second and third largest economies in Europe with GDPs of 2.8 and 2.1 trillion euros respectively.

In 2019, a person working on minimum wage in Romania would have to work for over 18.6 hours to pay for a one-hour session with a private psychologist. Furthermore in Slovakia, it would take a worker on minimum wage just over 16 hours of work to afford the cost of a session with a private psychologist in the country. At the other end of the scale, it takes around five hours of work on the minimum wage in France to cover the cost of a session with a psychologist.