A Romanian employee will reach a salary of a German one in at least 30 years from now, the ZF calculations show, which took into account the average growth rate of hourly labor cost in the last 15 years.

Currently, a company spends in Romania, with each employee, 4.6 euros for each hour worked by him, while in Germany the average labor cost is 31.4 euros per hour.

Romania is the second lowest in the European Union regarding the hourly labor cost, last being Bulgaria, at a cost of 3.8 euros per hour, as the Eurostat data show.

The average in the European Union is 24.6 euros per hour.

“Romania is still found in a competitive area in terms of labor costs. Currently, the main factor that may influence these costs would be the increased of the minimum salary, which would reduce the accessibility to the workforce in Romania for foreign investors.

In Europe, Romania has the advantage of low labor costs, but the risk of salary growth, the poor infrastructure and the unstable legal and economic environment (frequent change of the Tax Code, “populist” salary increases) may be a warning sign for potential investors. An investment decision doesn’t take into account only the salaries“, said Raluca Penes, HR coordinator in the company of outsourcing HR services Smartree Romania.

With the current labor cost, Romania is at the level it was in Poland 10 years ago and now Poland has double salaries compared to Romania. How long will succeed Romania to cover the gaps versus other European Union countries (in EU, the net average salary is around 2,000 euros, in Romania was about 400 euros).

“If 15 years ago the minimum salary was 23 times smaller than today, it is clear that the trend will be that the Romanian’s salaries should growth. Yet the gap between us and the rest of the developed European countries is quite high. The salaries in Romania are likely to double in 10 years, but the gap will not be recovered in less than 15-20 years, even in the context of a common economic space and whether the EU evolves and keeps its cohesion“, Raluca Penes from Smartree also said.

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