New data from the MojaPlaća salary service, operated by Alma Career Croatia and part of the system of portal MojPosao, shows that while wages in Croatia continued to rise strongly in 2025, the majority of workers still earn less than €1,500 per month.
The average monthly net salary in Croatia in 2025, including bonuses, reached €1,538, a significant 14 per cent increase compared to the previous year.
However, the median salary, which better reflects what most people actually earn, stood at €1,430. This means more than half of employees earn below the national average, despite a 15 per cent rise in median pay year on year.
In the final quarter of 2025, average wages increased further to €1,578, while the median reached €1,483. Notably, the gap between average and median salaries is now the smallest it has been in five years, suggesting that lower-paid workers are seeing faster wage growth than before.
Even so, 38 per cent of employees remain in the €1,000–€1,500 income bracket, although this share has fallen from 44 per cent a year earlier.
Encouragingly, higher income brackets are expanding. Around 22 per cent of workers now earn between €1,500 and €2,000, while 15 per cent earn more than €2,000 per month, up from just 10 per cent in 2024. The share of workers earning under €1,000 has almost halved to 12 per cent.
At the top of the pay scale are anaesthesiologists, earning an average of €3,657 per month, followed by pilots (€3,246) and IT architects (€2,823).
Doctors also feature prominently, with average earnings of €2,729.
In contrast, the lowest-paid occupations remain concentrated in service and manual roles, including seamstresses (€864), hairdressers (€962), cleaners (€963) and tailors (€984).
The IT sector continues to lead by industry, with average salaries of €1,789, around 16 per cent above the national average. Above-average pay is also found in finance and insurance, energy and utilities, construction and real estate.
Education and science remain among the lowest-paid sectors, with wages around 8 per cent below average.
The strongest wage growth occurred in public and local government (+20 per cent) and state-owned companies (+18 per cent), although the highest absolute salaries are still paid by private companies in predominantly foreign ownership.
Regionally, eastern Croatia continues to lag behind, with several counties recording average wages below €1,300. Zagreb remains the highest-paid region, with an average net salary of €1,662.
Gender and age disparities persist. Men earned on average 15 per cent more than women, while workers under 24 earned 21 per cent less than the national average. Education remains a key factor: employees with postgraduate degrees earn up to 55 per cent more than the national average.
