{"id":378344,"date":"2026-04-02T14:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/378344\/"},"modified":"2026-04-02T14:05:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-02T14:05:13","slug":"which-european-countries-have-the-best-salaries-after-taxes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/378344\/","title":{"rendered":"Which European countries have the best salaries after taxes?"},"content":{"rendered":"

By&nbspAlessio Dell’Anna<\/a>&nbsp&&nbspDamaso Jaivenois<\/p>\n

\n Published on 02\/04\/2026 – 10:30 GMT+2\u2022Updated
\n 10:45\n <\/p>\n

If you work in Luxembourg, you’re in luck \u2014 you’re likely being paid the highest hourly wage on average across the whole of Europe<\/p>\n

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The Grand Duchy at the heart of the continent offers an average net wage of \u20ac49.7 per hour, according to new Eurostat<\/a> figures released this week.<\/p>\n

A group of Nordic nations comes next, with Iceland in second place (\u20ac47.0), followed by Norway (\u20ac45.8) and Denmark (\u20ac44.7).<\/p>\n

At the other end of the table, Latvia (\u20ac12.9), Romania (\u20ac12.9) and Bulgaria (\u20ac10.5) have the lowest average hourly wage.<\/p>\n

Which countries are seeing the fastest net salary growth?<\/p>\n

It’s not all bad news for Eastern Europe, however. Between 2021 and 2025, Bulgaria recorded the largest increase in net salaries, with a 69.4% surge.<\/p>\n

Poland also performed extremely strongly with wages after taxes rising by 66% over the same period, followed by Romania with a 61.3% surge.<\/p>\n

Workers in Croatia, Lithuania and Hungary also saw their net pay increase by more than 50% on average.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, pay slips remained relatively stable in Norway (5.5%), Sweden (6.1%) and Italy (10.6%), which reported the slowest increase in Europe between 2021 and 2025.<\/p>\n

Germany, France and Spain also posted wage growth below the EU average of 20%.<\/p>\n

Where do taxes weigh the most on employers and employees?<\/p>\n

Starting and running a medium-sized business in the EU can be costly for employers.<\/p>\n

For businesses with at least 10 employees, workers cost around \u20ac35 per hour in total. The rate rises to \u20ac38 when looking solely at Eurozone countries.<\/p>\n

Around a quarter of that money is for non-wage costs, like social contributions. But there are huge differences from one country to another in how labour costs are allocated.<\/p>\n

Employers in France (32%), Sweden (32%) and Slovakia (29%) sustain the highest non-salary costs, while that share is almost zero in Romania, Lithuania and Malta, according to Eurostat.<\/p>\n

Spanish and Italian businesses report higher taxes on work than the EU average, while reporting net hourly wages below the bloc’s average.<\/p>\n

Which countries record the highest labour costs in total?<\/p>\n

Employers in Luxembourg pay the most in total, around \u20ac57 per hour, when you include wages and social contributions, the highest rate in the EU.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a full \u20ac5 more per hour than second-placed Denmark and almost \u20ac10 more than the Netherlands in third place.<\/p>\n

But the gap between the top and the bottom of the ranking is glaring.<\/p>\n

In Bulgaria, labour costs are just \u20ac12 per hour, the lowest in the EU, and a little over \u20ac15 in Hungary.<\/p>\n

According to Eurostat, hourly labour costs at the whole economy level rose by 4.1% in the EU and by 3.8% in the euro area, compared with 2024.<\/p>\n

Malta was the only country where total labour costs went down (-0.5%), while the largest increases were recorded in Bulgaria (+13.1%), Croatia (+11.6%) and Slovenia (+9.3%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By&nbspAlessio Dell’Anna&nbsp&&nbspDamaso Jaivenois Published on 02\/04\/2026 – 10:30 GMT+2\u2022Updated 10:45 If you work in Luxembourg, you’re in luck…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378345,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,1392,1813,61,60,150,22121,1962],"class_list":{"0":"post-378344","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-economy","10":"tag-employment","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-ie","13":"tag-ireland","14":"tag-jobs","15":"tag-salaries","16":"tag-work"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378344\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}