European salary spreads

A software developer in Bulgaria can now earn several times the country’s statutory pay floor, while a €6,000-a-month offer in Lithuania sits far closer to local top-end tech pay than to entry-level wages. (ec.europa.eu, nextjob.bg, lrt.lt) Eurostat said Bulgaria’s gross monthly minimum wage was €620 on January 1, 2026, the lowest in the European Union, while Lithuania’s was €1,153. The same Eurostat release said the highest minimum wage in the bloc was 4.4 times the lowest before adjusting for prices. (ec.europa.eu) A 2025 Bulgarian salary guide from recruiter NextJob put developer pay at €33,000 to €65,000 a year, with seniors at €45,000 to €65,000 and specialized DevOps, machine learning, and data roles at €65,000 to €100,000-plus. That works out to roughly €2,750 to €5,417 gross a month before bonuses or stock. (nextjob.bg) In Lithuania, state-backed wage data showed average gross monthly earnings reached €2,480 in the fourth quarter of 2025, and the information and communications sector averaged €3,600 gross. Sodra, the state social insurance fund, said the median gross wage was €1,934, meaning a €6,000 gross offer lands well above both the national midpoint and the broader tech-sector average. (lrt.lt, osp.stat.gov.lt) Those gaps have widened in a region where wages have been rising quickly but unevenly. The European Commission said nominal compensation growth in the second quarter of 2024 topped 11% in Bulgaria and ran between 6% and 10% in Lithuania and several other eastern member states. (op.europa.eu) Minimum wages have also moved up fast. Eurostat’s January 2026 snapshot showed eight European Union countries still below €1,000 a month, eight between €1,000 and €1,500, and six above €1,500, leaving employers to hire across a market with the same currency in many places but very different local pay baselines. (ec.europa.eu) That creates a simple arithmetic for remote hiring: a company paying €4,000 to €6,000 a month can sit far above average wages in Sofia or Vilnius and still stay below compensation norms in Western Europe. Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data on average annual wages shows Bulgaria and Lithuania remain well below richer western member states on economy-wide pay. (oecd.org, ec.europa.eu) Price levels narrow part of the gap, but not all of it. Eurostat said the spread between national minimum wages falls from 4.4 times to 2.4 times after adjusting for purchasing power, which means local living costs compress the difference without erasing it. (ec.europa.eu) The result is a European labor market where “good local salary” and “cheap international hire” can describe the same job offer at the same time. That tension is likely to keep shaping retention, poaching, and remote-work pay debates as wage growth cools from its 2023-2024 peaks. (op.europa.eu, lrt.lt)