Membres

TPA Study: "Labour Costs in Central and Southeast Europe as a Location Factor"

The TPA Group, together with the personnel consulting firm Kienbaum, has conducted a survey to determine the average gross remuneration for four groups (managing directors – executives – white-collar workers – blue-collar workers) in twelve selected countries, including Austria and eleven other countries from Central and South Eastern Europe (known as the CEE / SEE region).

TPA used the gross remuneration to calculate the total costs (gross amounts, employer‘s share of social insurance contribution, non-wage labour costs) for employers on the one hand and the net amounts paid out to employees on the other.

Total personnel costs for employers:

• Austria is – unsurprisingly – always in first place by a wide margin in terms of total costs.
• This is followed by Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Slovakia for all groups, all three being direct neighbours of Austria.
• Poland, Croatia and Hungary are in the middle in terms of total costs.
• Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Bulgaria have low total costs (their ranking varies depending on the group).
• Albania consistently has the lowest total costs for all groups of persons.

Personnel costs are noticably low in the non-EU countries. Furthermore, those countries that joined the EU earlier (Slovenia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary), have higher costs than the countries that joined the EU later (Romania, Bulgaria).

This means that personnel costs are definitely lower in South Eastern Europe. When considering the figures / calculations, it must of course be remembered that employees in the individual countries have different levels of training and qualifications and that other criteria (e.g. restrictions due to labour law provisions) should also be taken into account when deciding on a business location.

Within the scope of the study, personnel costs were extended to include the group of workers who work in production. In the blue-collar sector, on the other hand, personnel costs are consistently lower for those working in production: between 5% and 15%.

Conclusion: The study confirmed general life experience that personnel costs vary greatly from one industry to the next.

Read the study here.