Cyprus’ minimum wage below EU average

The minimum wage in Cyprus at under €1,000 per month is below the EU average of €1,132 among the 22 states of 27 that have adopted it.

Cyprus became the 22nd EU member state to have instituted it on January 1 2023.

At €940 per month, Cyprus is about halfway down the EU ranking, which is relatively low compared to the country with the highest minimum wage, Luxembourg (€2,508 p/m).

Bulgaria had the lowest minimum wage, at €399 per month.

Eurostat publishes national minimum wages twice yearly, in January and July. EU members are classified into three different groups:

– Group 1, with a national minimum wage above €1,500 per month (Luxembourg, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and France). The national minimum wage in France stood at €1,747.

– Group 2, with a national minimum wage higher than €1,000 but lower than €1,500 per month, includes Spain (€1,260) and Slovenia (€1,203).

– Group 3, with a national minimum wage below €1,000 per month (Cyprus, Greece, Portugal, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Czechia, Estonia, Slovakia, Croatia, Hungary, Latvia, Romania and Bulgaria).

All candidate and potential candidate countries with a national minimum wage, for which data are available, would belong to group 3, with minimum wage levels ranging from €375 in Albania to €532 in Montenegro.

Meanwhile, the United States would fall within group 2 (€1,156 per month at the federal level).

The average for the 22 member states with minimum wage is €1,132 monthly.

The average annual growth rate between July 2013 and July 2023 was highest in Romania (+12.9%), followed by Lithuania (+11.2%), Bulgaria (+9.7%) and Czechia (+9.0%).

The lowest average annual growth rates among EU Member States were recorded in Malta (+1.7 %) and France (+2.0%).