Social contributions can weigh as much as a third of the salary paid to an employee.
If you work in Luxembourg, you're in luck — you're likely being paid the highest hourly wage on average across the whole of Europe
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The Grand Duchy at the heart of the continent offers an average net wage of €49.7 per hour, according to new Eurostat figures released this week.
A group of Nordic nations comes next, with Iceland in second place (€47.0), followed by Norway (€45.8) and Denmark (€44.7).
At the other end of the table, Latvia (€12.9), Romania (€12.9) and Bulgaria (€10.5) have the lowest average hourly wage.
Which countries are seeing the fastest net salary growth?
It's not all bad news for Eastern Europe, however. Between 2021 and 2025, Bulgaria recorded the largest increase in net salaries, with a 69.4% surge.
Poland also performed extremely strongly with wages after taxes rising by 66% over the same period, followed by Romania with a 61.3% surge.
Workers in Croatia, Lithuania and Hungary also saw their net pay increase by more than 50% on average.
On the other hand, pay slips remained relatively stable in Norway (5.5%), Sweden (6.1%) and Italy (10.6%), which reported the slowest increase in Europe between 2021 and 2025.
Germany, France and Spain also posted wage growth below the EU average of 20%.
Where do taxes weigh the most on employers and employees?
Starting and running a medium-sized business in the EU can be costly for employers.
For businesses with at least 10 employees, workers cost around €35 per hour in total. The rate rises to €38 when looking solely at Eurozone countries.
Around a quarter of that money is for non-wage costs, like social contributions. But there are huge differences from one country to another in how labour costs are allocated.
Employers in France (32%), Sweden (32%) and Slovakia (29%) sustain the highest non-salary costs, while that share is almost zero in Romania, Lithuania and Malta, according to Eurostat.
Spanish and Italian businesses report higher taxes on work than the EU average, while reporting net hourly wages below the bloc's average.
Which countries record the highest labour costs in total?
Employers in Luxembourg pay the most in total, around €57 per hour, when you include wages and social contributions, the highest rate in the EU.
That’s a full €5 more per hour than second-placed Denmark and almost €10 more than the Netherlands in third place.
But the gap between the top and the bottom of the ranking is glaring.
In Bulgaria, labour costs are just €12 per hour, the lowest in the EU, and a little over €15 in Hungary.
According to Eurostat, hourly labour costs at the whole economy level rose by 4.1% in the EU and by 3.8% in the euro area, compared with 2024.
Malta was the only country where total labour costs went down (-0.5%), while the largest increases were recorded in Bulgaria (+13.1%), Croatia (+11.6%) and Slovenia (+9.3%).