Multinational employees will see their salaries go up by 6% next year after having got a similar raise in 2011. Companies will mostly reward their management employees in 2012, human resources specialists say.
The average net wage has gone up 9.8% since the beginning of the crisis, and the most spectacular raises (over 50%) were those in the IT and telecom industries, according to the data provided by the National Statistics Institute.
“Companies that had salaries frozen in the last two years have budgeted significant raises percentage-wise, of up 7% in 2012, but this is mostly true for those industries with low average wages such as textile production, so that increases will not be spectacular,” says Oana Daki, country manager of Consulteam, the representative of human resources giant Mercer on the local market.
Daki added that salaries would continue to go up in the IT sector, while stagnating in the banking sector.
Mercer, which is part of the Marsh & McLennan Companies group, conducts a salary survey on the Romanian market on a sample of over 150 multinationals every year.
The Mercer survey shows that employees in the IT industry will be paid 3% to 4% more in 2012, considering they earn more than double the average wage, while those working in the automotive industry, where unions are powerful, will get 5% to 6% more money.
IT industry salaries have gone up by almost 15% over the past year, to an average of 3,688 lei (about EUR850) per month according to the statistics institute data. The average net wage in the entire economy rose by almost 9% during the same period (October 2010 – October 2011), to RON1,457 (about EUR340). The increase in the average wage is largely because of the 15% increase in public sector wages, which had been cut by 25% in 2010, the harshest step taken by the government during the crisis.
Other sectors to have granted significant raises to their employees since the beginning of the crisis are the energy sector and the industrial sector, where employees earned 20% more in 2011 than three years ago. However, Romanian employees are paid some of the lowest wages in Europe, which is why raises are significantly higher than in other regions.
Experts, however, say that the 6% raise employers plan for 2012 will not help Romania overcome its condition of being one of the countries with the lowest purchasing power, considering these raises will not even cover inflation. (EUR1=RON4.3197)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)