HUF 330,000 gross wage at the smallest Hungarian companies to be included in official stats

From January, the focus of the publication of earnings statistics will be on the whole national economy,

said Katalin Janák, Head of Department at the KSH, at a background briefing today.

Previously (since the 1998 release), enterprises with at least five employees, the household sector and major non-profit institutions were included in the earnings statistics. From 2021 onwards, the stats office also provided data on the whole national economy on a monthly basis. Until now, however, the latter figures were only published in the tables of the KSH, not in the monthly information bulletins.

The focus of the monthly reports has therefore been on companies with more than five employees, budgetary institutions and major non-profit institutions. By now, however, the statistical office has collected five years' worth of data at the level of the whole economy, which allows it to cover the whole range of employers. From January onwards, not only firms with more than five employees but also small enterprises will be included in the collection / data series.

In 2022, the average gross wage

• was HUF 516,000 at business with more than five employees; and
• HUF 500,000 in the economy as a whole.

So the difference is not significant, but it is true to say that small firms are dragging down the average. In the smallest companies, with less than five employees, people earn HUF 333,000 gross, while in the smallest non-profit institutions they earn HUF 392,000.

Of course, it could well be that the size of the black economy is larger in smaller companies, and that there is not really such a big difference between the wages of smaller and larger companies. In any case, official figures show that people in small firms earn nearly 170,000 less than the gross national average.

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