ZAGREB, August 26, 2019 – Mass-scale emigration of Croatians abroad has triggered off two significant processes on the labour market: a salaries rise and the opening of the market to older workers, the Večernji List daily newspaper wrote in its issue on Monday.
The beginning of the rise in monthly salaries coincided with the end of the recession and the start of the economic recovery in 2014, Croatian Chamber of Commerce (HGK) analyst Zvonimir Savić was quoted by the daily newspaper as saying.
The average monthly take-home pay is around 6,500 kuna (878 euro), with the average monthly wage in Zagreb being 1,000 kuna higher than that.
The daily shows in a table that expressed in euro, the gross monthly salary in Croatia stood at 1,030 euro in 2016 to rise 10.6% to 1,139 euro in 2018.
Analyst Savić warns that a rise in salaries in Croatia in the recent years was lower than that in some countries in transition.
When it comes to the gross salary, Slovenia, Estonia and the Czech Republic have average gross salaries than those in Croatia. Of the 16 countries presented in the table, the first mentioned three countries occupy the top three places, Croatia ranks fourth (€1,139), and is followed with Poland with the gross monthly salary of €1,070 in 2018 and by Hungary (€1,035). Slovakia and Latvia are in the group with the gross monthly salary above 1000 euros (1,013 and 1,010 respectively) last year.
In Slovenia, for example, the gross salaries rose by 6.2% from €1,585 in 2016 to €1,682 in 2018.
A majority of countries in transition have been faced with the brain drain and Romania, for instance, addressed that with a significant increase in salaries. For example, gross salaries in Romania skyrocketed by 54% from 2016 to 2018 to come to €964.
Broken down by sectors, in Croatia one of the biggest rises of some 5 percent was registered in the healthcare sector. Thus, currently the average net salary paid to employees in this sector is 8,413 kuna (€1,137).
In Croatia, every other employee receives the monthly salary below 5,595 kuna (€756) and every fourth worker earns less than 4,252 kuna (€574) monthly.
More economic news can be found in the Business section.
