With a net average salary close to 3,400 lei (EUR717) per month in 2018, the employees in the sector earned 2.2 times more in 2018 than five years ago.
“Somehow justice was done with these raises, because this social category was not paid fairly for its efforts. On the other hand, the salary hikes hurt labor efficiency, affecting the chance for reform (…) Our analysis shows that things are serious about 15% to 25% of the physicians, who do little, extremely little and very little work,” said Laszlo Lorenzovici, consultant with advisory firm Hospital Consulting.
Public servants remained the highest paid employees in the public sector, despite healthcare salary raises. With an average salary of RON4,200 in net amount per month in 2018, their salaries are 53% higher than in 2014.
On the other hand, the education system employees are the laggards of the system: with a net average wage of RON2,734 per month they only earn 58% more than in 2014.
The public sector employs more than 1.2 million people, and the public sector salary spending stood at a 9.1% of the GDP in 2018, the highest since 2009 (9.5% of GDP).
“The wage bill in the public sector is at an all-time high, even higher than before the crisis. The burden of the wage bill in the public sector is greater in Romania than the European average and, historically speaking, we’ve never had a higher level of public sector salaries in the GDP as the level projected for 2019 (10% i.e.),” said Ionut Dumitru, chairman of the Fiscal Council. (EUR1=RON4.7401)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)