In 2022 there were 21 out of 27 European Union member states with an official minimum wage set by the government.
Turns out this is already the eighth (#9) article about minimum wages in European Union featured on the blog. To keep it up, here is the raw data for minimum wages across European Union in 2022.
Please don't judge too hard, data are taken from this article on Wikipedia, and applied some basic calculations for yearly growth.
The minimum wage in European Union member countries 2022
| Country | Gross 2022 | Gross 2021 | Growth | Change % | |
| 1 | Luxembourg | €2,202.00 | €2,142.00 | €60.00 | 2.80% |
| 2 | Germany | €1,976.00 | €1,584.00 | €392.00 | 24.75% |
| 3 | Ireland | €1,775.00 | €1,616.00 | €159.00 | 9.84% |
| 4 | Netherlands | €1,701.00 | €1,636.00 | €65.00 | 3.97% |
| 5 | France | €1,645.00 | €1,539.00 | €106.00 | 6.89% |
| 6 | Belgium | €1,626.00 | €1,594.00 | €32.00 | 2.01% |
| 7 | Spain | €1,166.00 | €1,108.00 | €58.00 | 5.23% |
| 8 | Slovenia | €1,074.43 | €941.00 | €133.43 | 14.18% |
| 9 | Greece | €832.00 | €758.00 | €74.00 | 9.76% |
| 10 | Malta | €822.00 | €777.00 | €45.00 | 5.79% |
| 11 | Portugal | €822.00 | €741.00 | €81.00 | 10.93% |
| 12 | Lithuania | €730.00 | €607.00 | €123.00 | 20.26% |
| 13 | Poland | €655.00 | €611.00 | €44.00 | 7.20% |
| 14 | Estonia | €654.00 | €584.00 | €70.00 | 11.99% |
| 15 | Slovakia | €646.00 | €580.00 | €66.00 | 11.38% |
| 16 | Czechia | €641.00 | €575.00 | €66.00 | 11.48% |
| 17 | Croatia | €631.00 | €546.00 | €85.00 | 15.57% |
| 18 | Hungary | €556.00 | €487.00 | €69.00 | 14.17% |
| 19 | Romania | €515.00 | €466.00 | €49.00 | 10.52% |
| 20 | Latvia | €500.00 | €430.00 | €70.00 | 16.28% |
| 21 | Bulgaria | €363.00 | €312.00 | €51.00 | 16.35% |
| Average EU | €1,025.35 | €934.95 | €90.40 | 9.67% |
Data source: List of European countries by minimum wage
It should be noted: The calculations are based on the assumption of a 40-hour working week and a 52-week year, with the exceptions of France (35 hours), Belgium (38 hours), Ireland (39 hours), and Germany (39.1 hours). Most the minimum wages are fixed at a monthly rate, but there are countries where the minimum wage is fixed at an hourly rate or weekly rate.
As it already happened in the previous years, there are no changes in the country with the highest and lowest minimum wage. Luxembourg as usual ranks #1 with more than EUR 2,000 gross minimum wage in 2022, while Bulgaria takes the last spot with a minimum wage set at EUR 363. Making a gap between the highest and lowest salary in European Union 6.06 times. the good news is the gap between the highest and lowest is shrinking year over year.
The steepest increase has been observed in Germany, where the minimum hourly pay is set to increase to 12 EUR per hour starting October 2022
The average growth rate for minimum wages across the European Union has been about 9.67% and seems this is the trend that will continue. As usual, the biggest growth in terms of percentage increase has been observed in the new member states
When visualizing data on the map, its' clearly visible that higher minimum wages are set in the Western European countries, despite the higher growth rates are found in Eastern European countries.