People in Bratislava earned the most in the first quarter of 2022, the Statistics Office announced. (source: TASR - Michal Svítok)
Salaries in Slovakia kept going up at the start of this year, though they did not manage to keep up with surging prices in many sectors.
The Statistics Office has said the average gross wage increased year-on-year in all the 19 monitored sectors, but real wage growth was recorded in only seven due to inflation.
“Consumer prices rose dynamically, therefore real wage dropped by 1.4 percent,” the Statistics Office added.
The average nominal monthly wage during the first three months of 2022 reached €1,212, an increase of 7.8 percent compared to the same period last year.
Salaries have been growing at a higher rate for several quarters.
Financial services at the top
Nevertheless, people in Slovakia could not afford to buy more products and services for their money in early 2022 compared to a year ago.
(source: slovak.statistics.sk)
The last time a similar decline in real wages was recorded was in the second quarter of 2020. “Whereas then the decline was caused by the pandemic, at the beginning of the year, it was due to accelerating inflation,” the Statistics Office said.
The seasonally adjusted average wage rose by 1.4 percent quarter-on-quarter when compared to the fourth quarter of 2021.
Year-on-year, salaries rose most rapidly in financial and insurance services (19.8 percent), other services (16.1 percent), as well as accommodation and food services (14.6 percent). The last mentioned sector sustained the biggest hit by the coronavirus pandemic, and it has long been the sector offering the lowest average salary.
Today, the salary in accommodation and food services stands at €659 a month.
Significant drop in real estate
In total, 11 sectors reported a wage lower than the average of the Slovak economy and 8 sectors were above average in the first months of 2022.
The highest average gross wages have long been in the financial and insurance activities, currently at €2,527 a month. “On average, employees in the IT sector and in the supply of electricity, gas and steam earned over €2,000 a month,” the Statistics Office said.
Similarly, the sectors employing most people in Slovakia recorded high wage increases year-on-year. In industry, it was by 8.1 percent to €1,272 a month. In trade, the increase was 11.9 percent to €1,132.
“Real wages continued to grow in trade, but they dropped in industry,” the Statistics Office noted.
Real wages dropped the most in the real estate sector, by 8.3 percent.
People earned less
People in Bratislava earned the most in the first quarter of this year. The average monthly wage there stood at €1,546. In other regions, wages ranged from €919 in the Prešov Region to €1,128 in the Trnava Region.
In all regions, the average wage was higher year-on-year, with the highest increase in the Žilina Region, at 8.9 percent, and in the Trnava Region, at 8.7 percent.
“However, after adjusting the effect of inflation, the average wages in real terms decreased in all regions of Slovakia,” the Statistics Office said.
They decreased the least in the Žilina Region, by 0.4 percent, and the most in the Prešov Region, by 2.9 percent.
