Albanian workers are the lowest paid in Europe, both in terms of the salary they receive per hour and the purchasing power, or the products they can buy with it.

Especially in terms of purchasing power, with an hourly wage in Albania you can buy half as much compared to countries in the region, such as Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, North Macedonia, or Montenegro.

The data was released in a recent Eurostat report, which compares hourly wages in euros and measured in purchasing power parity (PPP) in the European Union and candidate countries for 2022. (Data for Kosovo is missing).

Albanian workers, according to the data, are paid 2.47 euros per hour, compared to Serbian workers, who receive almost double, at 4.43 euros per hour, or in Bosnia at 4 euros. Data for Montenegro has not been updated, but they were paid 3.42 euros per hour as of 2014 and Macedonians 2.2 euros in 2014.

Women in Albania are paid 2.63 euros per hour, while men are paid 2.39 euros, according to Eurostat statistics.

According to the purchasing power standard (PPS), which makes data more comparable because it eliminates price differences, Albania ranks last again with an hourly wage of 4.62 PPS, compared to 7.6 PPS in Serbia and 8.7 PPS in Bosnia. North Macedonia had this indicator of 5.2 as of 2018 (when in Albania it was 3.2) and Montenegro 6.2 as of 2014.

According to data from October 2022, the average gross hourly wage, expressed in euros, shows large differences between European Union countries. The highest average gross hourly wage was recorded in Denmark at 29.8 euros, followed by Luxembourg (24.0 euros), Belgium (23.8 euros), Ireland (20.3 euros), Germany (19.4 euros), Finland and Sweden (with 19.3 euros each) and the Netherlands (19.0 euros), Eurostat reports.

On the other hand, the lowest average gross hourly wages were recorded in Bulgaria (4.1 euros), Romania (5.6 euros), Hungary (5.7 euros), Portugal (6.2 euros), Croatia (6.8 euros) and Poland (6.9 euros).

Overall, the highest average hourly wage in an EU country was 7.4 times higher than the lowest.

According to purchasing power parity, the average gross hourly wage at the national level, in October 2022, was 3.3 times higher in the country with the highest wage compared to the lowest, when expressed in purchasing power standards (PPS), a unit that eliminates differences in price levels between countries.

The highest average gross hourly wages, expressed in PPS, were recorded in Denmark (22.4 PPS), Belgium (21.3 PPS), Luxembourg (18.4 PPS), Germany (17.3 PPS), and Ireland (17.0 PPS). At the other end of the scale, the lowest average gross hourly wages were recorded in Bulgaria (6.7 PPS), Portugal (7.4 PPS), Hungary and Latvia (8.9 PPS each), Croatia (9.4 PPS), Slovakia (9.7 PPS), Greece (9.8 PPS) and Romania (9.9 PPS).