The COVID‑19 pandemic has brought further attention to the pay rate of nurses and the need to ensure a sufficient remuneration level to attract and retain nurses in the profession.
On average across EU countries, the remuneration of hospital nurses in 2022 was about 20% above the average wage of all workers in each country. However, in some countries like Finland, France, Portugal, Sweden and Italy, nurses do not earn more than the average wage of all workers (Figure 7.17).
Figure 7.17 compares the remuneration of hospital nurses in Euros adjusted for differences in cost-of-living across countries to provide an indication of the relative economic well-being of nurses and the financial incentives to consider moving to another EU country to obtain better-paid jobs. In 2022, nurses in Luxembourg and Belgium had remuneration levels about three times higher than those working in Portugal and the Slovak Republic. This explains at least partly why Luxembourg and Belgium are able to attract a large number of nurses from other countries.
In most countries, the remuneration of nurses increased in real terms in the decade leading up to the pandemic. This was particularly the case in Hungary, Poland, the Slovak Republic and Czechia, where nurses obtained pay rises averaging 4‑5% per year in real terms between 2010 and 2019 (Figure 7.18). This helped narrow the gap with other EU countries.
In contrast, the remuneration of nurses decreased in real terms between 2010 and 2019 in Greece, Italy, Portugal, Finland and the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom (England), the income of nurses increased in nominal terms, but it fell by over 3% in real terms between 2010 and 2019, mainly due to public sector pay policies implemented between 2011/12 and 2017/18.
Following the pandemic that started in 2020 and rising inflation rates that started to pick up in 2021 and peaked in 2022 in most EU countries, the real wage growth of nurses has varied widely across the EU. In some countries, nurses have obtained substantial pay rises in real terms between 2019 and 2022 – notably in Hungary, Poland, Slovenia and Estonia, and to a lesser extent also in France although the latest data is for 2021 and does not reflect the high inflation rate in 2022. In Hungary, following substantial increases already provided in previous years, the government announced in early 2024 further increases in the remuneration of nurses by 20% in nominal terms, with the aim that the average basic salary of nurses would reach 37% of the average basic salary of doctors. In Poland, health workers including nurses have received substantial pay increases in 2022, reaching close to 30% on average. This includes a higher pay raise for nurses with certain qualifications. Further increases have been granted in 2023 to improve the attractiveness and retention in the occupation (OECD/European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, 2023[1]).
However, in several other countries, the growth in the remuneration of nurses in real terms between 2019 and 2022 was almost nil or negative due to rising inflation rates that eroded nominal wage growth. Nurses were not the only occupation affected by high inflation in recent years. While real wages on average across all occupations have started to rise again in most EU countries in 2023 and 2024 following the reduction in inflation rate, they remained in early 2024 below their 2019 level in many countries (OECD, 2024[2]).
