Albania, the first in Europe for the high weight of low-paid employees

Graph of low paid employees in% of the total for 2018 for Europe

 Albania is still ranked as a country where unemployment is at high levels compared to other European countries, but even those who work, for the most part, receive the minimum wage. In 2018, Albania was the first European country to have more than 23% of the total of employees who receive low-wage, according to Eurostat estimates.

The European Institute of Statistics considers low-wage earners to earn less than two-thirds of the average gross wage per month. In EU countries in 2018 it was estimated that 15.3% of employees had low wages, while in Albania, this category is 8 percentage points higher.

Low wage categories include mainly women and people with low education. This is equally valid for Albania and Europe.

The largest number of low-wage workers is located in Albania and the Baltic countries, in contrast, the smallest number of low-wage workers is in Sweden and the Nordic countries.

The percentage of low-paid employees varies significantly between member countries in 2018. The largest number was observed in Albania with 23.02%, Latvia (23.5%), followed by Lithuania (22.3%), Estonia (22.0%), Poland ( 21.9%) and Bulgaria (21.4%).

In contrast, less than 10% of employees had low wages in Sweden (3.6%), Portugal (4.0%), Finland (5.0%), Italy (8.5%), France (8.6%) and Denmark (8.7 %). In terms of age distribution, low-wage earners accounted for more than a quarter (26.3%) of employees under 30 years of age.