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.

The country with the highest minimum wage rate in Europe during the first half of 2025 was Luxembourg, with a minimum wage of 2638 euros. Ireland, the Netherlands, and Germany were the countries with the next highest minimum wages, all above 2000 euros a month, while Albania, Bulgaria, and Montenegro had the lowest minimum wages in the same period.

Luxembourg had the highest average annual wage in Europe in 2023, at approximately 89,700 U.S. dollars when adjusting for purchasing power parity (PPP). Greece, which had an average annual salary of less than 30,238 U.S dollars a year, had the lowest among the countries provided in this statistic.

The average for 2021 based on 25 countries was 24.17 percent. The highest value was in Bulgaria: 29.9 percent and the lowest value was in Slovakia: 19.1 percent. The indicator is available from 1963 to 2023. Below is a chart for all countries where data are available.

Net annual earnings for a single earner family with two children in the European Union have increased from 25,434 euros in 2013 to 33,939 euros over the period from 2013 to 2023. Net earnings received a boost during the pandemic years of 2020 and 2021, in spite of gross earnings decreasing in 2020, due to reduced taxes and increased family allowances.

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.

As of 2023, the average taxation rate for a single person without children who earned an average salary in the European Union was 29.67 percent of their total earnings. For a two-earner couple without children earning an average salary it was slightly less, at 29.57 percent, while for a single person without children earning 1.67 times the average salary, the rate of taxation in the EU was 35.16%. Having children greatly reduced the average rate of taxation, with a one-earner couple with two children in the EU only paying out 15.97 percent of their gross household earnings in taxes in 2023. Tax rates in Europe are generally quite high, due to the progressive income tax systems set in place during the 20th century in many countries, which require high taxation in order to fund generous social welfare systems. Belgium was the country with the highest average rates of taxation in 2023, with a high earning single person without children subject to pay almost half of their gross household earnings out in taxes. Other countries in North-western Europe such as Germany, Denmark, and Luxembourg also top the list for highest income taxation rates in Europe, while Cyprus was the country in Europe with the lowest average taxation rates in Europe during the same period. In both Czechia and Poland, single-earner families with two children actually saw the lowest average tax rates, due to the strong pronatalist policies in these countries and tax incentives for traditional single-earner households.

In December 2024, the inflation rate for food in the European Union (EU) reached 2.4 percent compared to the same month the year prior. Starting in the beginning of 2022, food prices started to rise rapidly. In March 2023, the food inflation rate in the EU reached its peak at 19.19 percent. Since April 2023, the rate started to decrease. Food inflation in Europe One of the main drivers of the increase in consumer prices was the rapid rise in energy prices. In the energy sector, the harmonized index of consumer prices inflation of the EU, a concept to measure and compare inflation internationally, was at 41.1 percent in June 2022, whereas the other categories were all below 10 percent. In Germany, the year-on-year consumer price index development for food and beverages was at 12.33 percent in the year 2023, just a slight dip from the all-time high of 12.51 percent in 2022. By 2024, this had dropped to 1.92 percent. There are a number of ways in which European consumers are trying to save on food costs due to rising prices. The most popular way to deal with the rising food prices is to reduce at-home food waste. An average of about half of consumers in selected European countries stated that this is how they responded to the price increases. Other popular ways were to buy only the essentials or to purchase mostly store brands. Food inflation worldwide In 2022, Europe and Central Asia were the regions with the highest food inflation rates worldwide. The rate of food inflation in those regions was about 18 percent in 2022, which is more than twice as high as it was in the previous year. In Latin America and the Caribbean, the food inflation rate rose from 5.4 to 11.9 percent during the same period. When categorized by income classification, low-income countries have significantly higher food price inflation, as compared to lower-middle-, upper-middle-, and high-income countries. On average, low-income countries had a food price inflation rate of about 30 percent in 2023. The world average rate was at 6.5 percent. Zimbabwe was the country with the highest level of real food inflation worldwide. The southern African country experienced a food inflation of approximately 46 percent in 2024. This was more than two times as high as in any other country in the world.

Since the oil price shock in 1974 unemployment increased significantly and also did not really decline in periods of economic upswings in Europe. This is especially the case for the countries of the European Union; therefore we face a special need for explanation. Looking at the member states on finds considerable differences. Since 1977 the unemployment rate within the EU is higher than the average unemployment rate of all OECD countries. The economic upswing in the second half of the 80s relaxed the labor market but nevertheless the unemployment rate remained on a high level. This study deals with the development of unemployment between 1974 and 1993 in four different G7 countries: Germany, France, Great Britain and Italy. Besides the common trend of an increasing unemployment rate, there are significantly different developments within the four countries. The analysis is divided in two parts: the first part looks at the reasons for the increase in unemployment in the considered countries; the second part aims to explain the difference between the developments of unemployment during economic cycles in the different countries. After the description of similarities and differences of labor markets in the four countries it follows a long term analysis based on annual data as well as a short and medium term analysis on quarterly data. This is due to the fact that short and medium term developments are mainly influenced by cyclical economic developments but long term developments are mainly influenced by other factors like demographical and structural changes. A concrete question within this framework is if an increase in production potential can contribute to a decrease in unemployment. For the long term analysis among others the Hysteresis-hypothesis (Hysteresis = Greek: to remain; denotes the remaining effect; in this context: remaining of unemployment) used for the explanation of the persistence of a high unemployment rate. According to this approach consisting unemployment is barely decreased after economic recovery despite full utilization of capacity. According to the Hysteresis-hypothesis there are two reasons for this. The first reason is that for long term unemployed the abilities to work and the qualification level decreased, their human capital is partly devalued. The second reason is that employees give up wage restraint, because they do not fear unemployment anymore and therefore enforce higher real wages. Besides economic recovery companies are not willing to hire long term unemployed with a lower expected productivity for the higher established tariff wages. In the context of the empirical investigation a multiple explanatory approach is chosen which takes supply side and demand side factors into consideration. The short and medium term analysis refers to Okun´s law (=an increase in the unemployment rate is connected with a decrease of the GDP; if the unemployment rate stays unchanged, the GDP grows with 3% p.a.) and aims to analyze more detailed the reactions of unemployment to economic cycles. A geometrical lag-model is compared with a lag-model ager Almon. This should ensure a precise as possible analysis of the Okun´s relations and coefficients. Register of tables in HISTAT: A.: Unemployment in the European G7 countries B.: Analysis of unemployment in the Federal Republic of Germany C.: Basic numbers: International comparison A.: Unemployment in the European G7 countries A.1. Determinates of unemployment in the EU, Germany (1974-1993) A.2. Determinates of unemployment in the EU, France (1974-1993) A.3. Determinates of unemployment in the EU, Great Britain (1974-1993) A.4. Determinates of unemployment in the EU, Italy (1974-1993) B: Analysis of unemployment in the Federal Republic of Germany B.1. Growth of unemployment in the Federal Republic of Germany (1984-1991) B.2. Output and unemployment in the Federal Republic of Germany (1961-1990) C: Basic numbers: International comparison C.1. Unemployment in EU countries, the USA, Japan and Switzerland (1960-1996) C.2. Gainful employments in EU countries, the USA, Japan and Switzerland (after inland and residency concept) (1960-1996) C.3. Employees in EU countries, the USA and Japan (1960-1996) C.4. Population in EU countries, the USA and Japan (1960-1996)

The average hourly labor cost in the European Union in 2023 was 31.8 euros, with the highest average among EU member states ranging from 53.9 euros in Luxembourg, to approximately nine euros in Bulgaria.

This dataset provides values for GDP PER CAPITA PPP reported in several countries. The data includes current values, previous releases, historical highs and record lows, release frequency, reported unit and currency.

Men in the European Union earned approximately 13 percent more than women in 2022, with Estonia having the biggest gender pay gap of 21 percent and Luxembourg having the lowest at minus 0.7 percent, meaning that on average women actually earned more than men in Luxembourg during that year.

Over the period observed, the average monthly gross salary in the Polish national economy increased annually and reached 8,181.72 zloty in 2024. Salary changes in Poland Despite the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, Poland's average real wage and salary have been growing steadily. In December 2024, average gross wages reached a growth of 9.8 percent. The monthly salary at the end of the fourth quarter of 2023 in the national economy amounted to 9,413 zloty and in the enterprise sector — 6,528 zloty.Since 2003 the minimum wage has increased from 800 zloty to 4,666 zloty as of January 2025. As a result, Poland ranked second in Central and Eastern European countries in terms of the minimum wage in 2024. Employment in Poland In 2023, nearly 15.2 million people were working in Poland, and the employment rate has increased by 15.4 percentage points since 2010. As a result, Poland also registered one of the lowest unemployment rates in the European Union. The average level of unemployment in the EU in 2023 was six percent. In Poland, it was 2.8 percent.Poles have the average duration of working life in the European Union, working on average 35.2 years. For comparison, the EU average amounted to 36.9 years. However, they are among the busier nations in Europe, working an average of 39 hours per week in the fourth quarter of 2023.In the first quarter of 2024, 73 percent of Poles were satisfied with their jobs. And the main reasons for changing employers were salary and the dissatisfaction with the current employer.

As of June 2024, Estonia recorded the highest average net salary among CEE countries, followed by Slovenia, Czechia, and Poland. Ukrainians earned the least, 285 euros net.

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.

As of 2021, the European countries who had the greatest share of their national income taken by the top 10 percent of earners were Turkey, Russia, and Armenia, with high earners in these countries taking home around half of all income. By contrast, the top decile in Slovakia, Iceland, and the Netherlands took home a share of national income almost half as large, at between 26 and 29 percent. On average, the top 10 percent in Europe took home over a third of national income, while the bottom half earned less than a fifth.

In 2024, Luxembourg had the highest annual starting salaries for upper level of secondary teachers in Europe, at 81,200 U.S. dollars, whereas the lowest average annual salaries for this category of teachers was recorded in Hungary, at 16,137 dollars.

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.

This statistic shows the household net adjusted annual disposable income of selected European countries, in U.S. dollars. Luxembourg had the highest annual income at over 44.7 thousand US dollars, while Russia was the lowest at just over 19 thousand US dollars.

German law graduates holding a doctorate degree can currently expect the highest average gross starting salary in the country when they enter the job market. Other degrees with good earning prospects include medicine, computer science (also with a doctorate degree), and industrial engineering. In comparison, those who studied graphics/design, humanities and social sciences are at the bottom of the starting salary food chain. Law courses among most attended Law, economics and social sciences were the subject groups seeing the highest student numbers in German universities, totaling over one million in 2023/2024. Engineering and mathematics rounded up the top three. German universities offer a variety of internationally recognized degrees, the Bachelor being the most frequently taken type of final exam. Slow yearly salary increase Among selected countries in the European Union, Germany ranks ninth in terms of average annual wages. All the same, when studying the change in average annual pay specifically in Germany during the last decade, a slow, but steady increase is visible year after year, until the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic hit in 2020. Since then, the average wage has been decreasing and in 2023 was around the same level as in 2017.