The average wage has exceeded 50,000. Yet, up to two-thirds of employees do not reach it.
The hourly wage in the Czech Republic was at 57 percent of the EU average last year, making it the seventh lowest among the 27 member states. However, since 2008, when the Czech Republic reached a level of 42 percent, this indicator has improved by 15 percentage points. As a result, the average salary here now exceeds 50,000 CZK.
International comparison of hourly wages, currently presented by Eurostat for the year 2025 in euro terms, shows that the Czech Republic achieved 57 percent of the average wage level of the European Union.
Boom of Real Wages
“Since 2008, when the Czech Republic was at only 42 percent of the European average wage level, we have approached it by 15 percentage points. However, some formerly poorer Eastern European countries are catching up with it even faster, overtaking Czech wages. This particularly includes Lithuania, where the wage level has risen from 26 to 65 percent of the EU average, or Estonia and Poland, which have reached 60 percent,”
wrote LP-Life, Director of the Department of Labor Market Statistics and Equal Opportunities at the Czech Statistical Office, Dalibor Holý.
In contrast, in Greece, the hourly wage increased by only seven percent and last year placed just behind the Czech Republic.
“Real wages have accelerated compared to last year, with all sectors benefiting. However, the wage growth was extremely differentiated. While real wages in real estate activities rose by 20 percent and in administrative and support activities by 17 percent, the purchasing power of workers' earnings in the energy sector essentially stagnated year-on-year,”
stated in a press release by the head of the labor statistics department of the Czech Statistical Office, Jitka Erhartová.
The growth was the strongest in the last five years
According to Eurostat data, the average gross monthly salary for full-time employment in the European Union was around 3,200 euros, which is more than 80,000 Czech crowns when converted. At the forefront of the ranking is Luxembourg with roughly 170,000 crowns, followed by Denmark with roughly 140,000 crowns and Ireland with more than 120,000 crowns. At the opposite end is Bulgaria with just under 30,000 crowns. Workers in countries like Romania, Hungary, Greece, or Poland earn less than 50,000 crowns per month.
Are you interested in how much it is here? In the first quarter, the average monthly gross salary increased year-on-year by 8.1 percent to 50,282 crowns. According to analysts, the real wage growth in the last period was the strongest in five years, and the value approached its highest level from 2021.
The highest average salary was received by workers in Prague, where it reached just under 70,000. And what is surprising? In no other region did the average salary exceed 50,000 crowns. People in the Karlovy Vary region earned the least, with an average of 42,391 crowns. Generally, it is true that two-thirds of employees do not even reach the average salary.
According to the Czech Statistical Office, the highest average salary in the first quarter was in information and communication activities, at just under 99 thousand crowns. This was followed by the finance and insurance sector with more than 89 thousand crowns. On the contrary, the lowest wages are in accommodation, food service, and hospitality. In the first three months of this year, it was an average of 30,688 crowns. Salaries for real estate workers grew the fastest, increasing on average by 22.1 percent to more than 49 thousand crowns.
Minimum Wage is Going Up
According to Raiffeisenbank analyst Tereza Krček, the increase in minimum wage contributed to wage growth in the first quarter. She noted that statistics do not include the growth of salaries in the public sector, which increased only from April after the end of the provisional budget.
The minimum decent wage for full-time work to cover the needs of an adult with a child, leisure time, and some savings amounted to 48,336 CZK gross last year. In Prague and Brno, the decent gross income was higher due to high housing costs, reaching nearly 57,000 CZK.
"A significant portion of people still remain below the decent minimum wage threshold, last year it was approximately 2.5 million workers - 63 percent. Almost three-quarters of women earn below the decent minimum,"
experts from the Platform for Minimum Decent Wage wrote. According to them, purchasing power is rising, but due to inflation and stagnation in earnings from previous years, people will likely only reach the pre-COVID living standard this year.
Chief Economist at Deloitte David Marek nonetheless predicts that wage growth will slow down in the future.
"In the long run, the current pace of wage growth is unsustainable given the development of labor productivity and unit labor costs,"
the analyst added for ČTK.
Sources: author's article, ČTK, ČSÚ, Platform for Minimum Decent Wage
