Eurostat: One in seven employees in the EU are low wage earners

One in seven workers in the European Union are low wage earners, according to a EU wages report released this week by the bloc's statistical service Eurostat.

The latest data, from 2022, shows that 14.7 percent of employees in the EU were classified as low paid – an overall improvement of 1.5 percent from 16.2 percent in 2018.

The statistical service defines low-income employees as workers who earn two-thirds or less of the average gross hourly wage in the country where they work.

The positive change is not reflected in all EU countries

However, this positive change is not reflected in all European countries. Across the EU, 25.2 percent of people under 30 were in the low wage earners category. In other age categories this share was lower, with 12.1 percent employees aged 30-49, and 13.4 percent older than 50.

The report also indicated that the lower an employee's education is, the more likely that they will be on a lower wage. In the 2022 data, 27.5 percent of low wage earners had a lower education.

Bulgaria has the highest share of low-paid workers with 26.8 percent of employees being placed in that bracket. This has increased by 5.4 percent from the 21.4 percent reported in the 2018 statistics. Next in line was Romania with 23.9 percent, followed by Latvia (23.3 percent), Greece (21.7 percent), Estonia (21.2 percent) and Cyprus (20 percent).

Data from Eurostat showed that most of these employees work in accommodation and food service activities (35.1 percent) or administrative and support service activities (32.3 percent).

The type of contract was also shown to play a key role. For example, workers with an employment contract of limited duration, 27.2 percent were in low-wage jobs, compared with 12.6 percent of those with an indefinite contract.

In contrast, less than 10 percent of employees were low-wage earners in Portugal (1.8 percent), Sweden (4.1 percent), Finland (6.5 percent), Italy (8.8 percent), Slovenia (9.4 percent) and France and Denmark (both 9.7 percent).

Has the gender pay gap improved in the European Union?

In short, no. Women still have a larger share of low wage jobs in comparison to their male counterparts in the EU: in 2022, 17.1percent of women were low wage earners compared to 12.6 percent of men.

This is an improvement from the figures from 2018, where 18.2 percent of female workers and 12.5 percent of male employees were low wage earners, but there is still a long way to go.