You might be a student here, or might be considering moving to Romania. When I was looking at job offers, as a student, I compared the offer to the “average” wage. Also, when negotiating salaries, I kept the “average” wage in mind. Was that the right attitude?
Well, maybe it works, if you live in a country where most graduates earn an “average” wage. But in Romania, 75% of employees earn less than the average wage. “If it’s 75%, than this average is ‘mean’, not ‘median’ and probably not ‘mode’ either,” I hear some of you math and statistics geniuses say. Yes, and the Romanian word “median” means ‘mean.’ It can be used for median, but when used in statistics in Cluj newspapers, the salariu mediu is the mean salary. And most people earn far less than that.
Observator News recently did a special called “Rich on paper, poor in the pocket” where they uncovered the real wages that Romanians earn a month. Observator is not based in Cluj, and I guess doesn’t invest in real estate.
33 percent earn less than 2750 lei per month. another 25 % up to 4150. Another 18 percent up to 5900. That’s a total of about 75 percent that earn less than 5900 lei per month.
Only 3 percent earn more than 15000 lei a month. That’s still less than 3000 euros. Another 5 percent earn between 9500 and 15000 lei a month. That’s a total of 8 percent who earn more than 9500 lei per month. That’s about 1830 Euros per month. Three EU countries have net minimum wages (after taxes) above 200o euros per month, which means they pay at least 10,000 lei, and a forth has a minimum wage above the 9500 euros per month. The UK’s minimum wage is also higher than 92 percent of jobs in Romania.
Now, yes, the cost of living is also higher in those countries, but by how much? Food is relatively stable. While baked goods cost more in Western Europe, key ingredients don’t always. Carrots and pears are imported from Holland, one of the highest salaried countries in Europe.
In the European Union, according to Observator News, only Bulgarian jobs pay worse than Romanian ones.
The highest salaries in Romania are not in the IT sector, but rather in extracting petroleum and natural gas. Those pay over three times as much as jobs in Horeca or manufacturing.
The “average” pay in Cluj is higher than the average in Romania. But then, there are more people working in IT in Cluj than the average town in Romania. You can’t run a city with just IT jobs. So, even though rents are among the highest in Romania, maybe jobs here don’t pay that well.
凤翔歌
But what if you already have a job here, how is it relevant? Well, do you rent? Or do you plan to rent out a place?
Knowing what the typical wage is makes it easier to negotiate a fair rent and to charge a rent that will result in occupancy. Of course, you can always rent to students, but the more fair the rent price, the more choice you have in who to rent to. (Maybe you don’t want to rent to students, because they are a higher risk, or because you keep having to find new tenants.)
Even if do you want to rent to students, it makes sense to charge a price that they can afford. Don’t charge summer, festival prices.
But you came here for a festival and it was mega expensive? Yeah, that’s only in festival season. Most people can’t afford that. If they could, then they didn’t get that wealthy by being stupid enough to pay that.
Unless you want to rent exclusively to lottery winners and pickpockets, please understand that most people earn less than the published “average” wages.