Can you compare the buying power in Serbia now with the buying power of lets say five years ago? Make it comparable though by taking out the inflation
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Short version:
On
average, people in Serbia today have
noticeably more buying power than five years ago, even
after you strip out inflation – something like
+25–40% in real terms, depending on whether you look at average or minimum wages. But it’s very uneven across regions and social groups.
1. What I’m actually comparing
To make “buying power” comparable, I’m looking at:
- Average net wage (what an average employee gets in hand)
- Minimum wage (for low-paid workers)
- Inflation (CPI) over the last five years
Then I adjust wages for inflation to see how much more (or less) stuff you can buy with one month’s salary.
2. Wages: 2019 vs. now
Average net wage
So nominally, the
average net wage almost doubled:
- 2019 → 2024: about +79%
- 2019 → 2025: about +99%
Minimum wage
- 2019: 155.3 RSD/hour
→ roughly 25–28k RSD per month net, depending on hours jpm.law+1
- 2024: 271 RSD/hour
→ about 47,700 RSD net per month for 176 hours (≈ €400) Regierung der Republik Serbien+1
- 2025: 308 RSD/hour
→ about 53,600 RSD net per month (≈ €450–460) epsu.org+1
Again, nominally, the minimum wage is
~80–100% higher than in 2019.
3. Inflation: taking the price increases out
Over the
last 5 years up to the end of 2024, prices in Serbia (CPI) rose
cumulatively by about 39% (average ~6.9% per year).
Worlddata.info+1
So if wages had only kept pace with prices:
- A 2019 average salary of ~54,900 RSD would need to be only around 76–77k RSD in 2024 money to have the same buying power.
- In reality, the average salary is ~98k RSD (2024) and ~109k RSD (2025).
Roughly:
- Average wage, 2019 → 2024 (real terms)
→ about +25–30% more buying power than in 2019.
- Average wage, 2019 → 2025 (real terms, rough)
→ about +35–45% more buying power, depending how 2025 inflation ends up.
For the
minimum wage, the pattern is similar:
- Nominal increase ≈ +80–100%
- After subtracting ~39% inflation, you still get something like +25–35% real gain.
So
on paper, both
average and minimum earners can buy clearly more goods and services today than five years ago, not less.
4. But do people
That’s the tricky part. The macro numbers say “yes”, but:
- Inequality and distribution
- The median wage is much lower than the average (e.g. median vs average gap in the stats), which means a lot of people earn less than the headline average. publikacije.stat.gov.rs+1
- High-paid sectors (IT, finance, some services in Belgrade) pulled the average up more than the rest.
- Housing and rent
- In major cities (Belgrade, Novi Sad), rents and property prices have risen faster than general CPI, so real buying power for housing may have improved much less or even worsened for renters.
- Food & everyday items
- Food prices had strong spikes in 2022–2023 with energy and global inflation. The government is currently even capping retail margins for food and basic consumer goods to protect purchasing power. Reuters+1
- Regional gaps
- Urban areas, especially Belgrade, show much higher average wages than poorer regions, so a Belgrader’s real buying power vs 2019 is usually much stronger than in a small town or rural area. Serbian Monitor+1
5. Bottom line
If you:
- Take average or minimum net wages, and
- Subtract the actual inflation of the last 5 years,
then:
Buying power in Serbia today is significantly higher than around 2019 – roughly 25–40% more in real terms for a typical full-time worker.
People who:
- live in big cities
- work in better-paid sectors, and
- own their home
tend to feel this improvement much more clearly than low-income renters in poorer regions.
If you tell me
which reference point you care about (average earner, minimum wage worker, IT salary in Belgrade, pensioner, etc.), I can do a more tailored “real income” comparison for that specific group.
Recent measure affecting purchasing power in Serbia
Jetzt sind wir vierstellig, alles geht leichter.
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