In Romania, four out of ten Romanians are paid the minimum wage in the economy. If they make money in other ways to round off their income or if part of their salary is “in the dark”, that’s another story. The important thing is that the majority of Romanians are struggling to survive, while the perception of our labor market is distorted by exceptions such as jobs with salaries of up to 35,000 lei.
While at the global level, an acute crisis in the IT market seems to be taking shape more and more fiercely, after massive layoffs from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and more, in Romania it seems that the same worrisome trend has not reached. In our country, programmers still enjoy monthly salaries of up to 7,000 euros or 35,000 lei.
The highest salaries in Romania
“We have in the team people from outside Romania who have settled here. Salaries outside are at the same level as here”, Roxana Epure, manager of a large software company from Bucharest, told Observatornews.ro.
Practically, a programmer skilled in the most requested programming languages of the moment enjoys salaries between 5000 and 7000 euros. Engineers from multinationals are also quite well off, even if, in their case, their salaries are not necessarily close to the financial privilege of IT professionals. This time, we are talking about salaries between 2,500 and 3,000 euros or up to 15,000 lei.
“There are even official statistics from Brussels that say, for example, that the standard of living in Bucharest has exceeded that of Berlin,” George Butunoiu, recruitment specialist, told the quoted source. Even in fields that require low qualifications, the reality in Romania’s big cities is very optimistic. “And it exceeded the standard of living in many other cities. Including these low-skilled jobs. Chefs earn a few thousand good euros here in Romania and about the same amount they earn abroad,” added Butunoiu.
It’s not bad in construction either, where salaries hover between 1,500 and 2,000 euros. A nanny costs around 1000 euros. However, the situation of approximately 40% of Romania’s employees, people who have to live on less than 2000 lei per month, is sad.