Growing dissatisfaction among workers across the country culminated in recent protests for higher incomes and more dignified pensions.

Trade unions warn that for many citizens, everyday survival has become a true 'art'.

As reported by RTL Danas, despite stories of economic prosperity, the actual data reveal a deep and unfair gap between employees in the private and public sectors. Analyses clearly show that it is more financially worthwhile to receive a salary from the state budget than to work for a private employer.

Record differences in income

The chief economist of the Croatian Employers' Association, Hrvoje Stojić, points out that the differences between the private and public sectors have reached historic highs.

According to the latest analyses, public employees every month receive on average 600 euros more into their accounts than workers in the private sector. This incredible disparity currently amounts to a huge 30.9 percent in favor of those whose employer is the state.

Figures from previous years vividly illustrate the growth of this trend to the detriment of private-sector workers. During 2019, that difference amounted to 15.3 percent, by 2022 it had risen to 19 percent, while in 2025 it jumped to almost a third difference in favor of the public sector.

An unusual European phenomenon

This economic situation is a real rarity in the European Union.

As written by net.hr, in most European countries incomes are more balanced, and the countries in which the public sector earns significantly more than the private sector generally rank among the least developed European member states. Experts from the employers' association explain that this massive gap occurred because the total wage bill in the public sector increased by as much as 51 percent in just three years.

On the other hand, trade unions offer a different explanation as well, noting that private-sector workers are often disadvantaged because it is harder for them to organize and negotiate for better rights. The president of the Independent Croatian Trade Unions, Dražen Jović, also warns of the huge problem of the grey economy. A significant portion of money in sectors such as construction, tourism, and trade is still paid in cash, outside official tax records, which artificially lowers the official average salary in the private sector.

Two completely different worlds

The rules of the economic game are completely different depending on who pays the monthly wage. Professor Ljubo Jurčić from the Faculty of Economics in Zagreb explains this phenomenon very simply, stating that in state services the amounts on payslips are often shaped according to political decisions and decrees. On the other hand, the private sector depends exclusively on actual earnings and productivity in the ruthless free market. Still, domestic experts note that private entrepreneurs are not entirely without responsibility either, and that their business model must adapt faster and better to modern economic challenges and technological transformations.

In the end, we arrive at the enormous absurdity of our system in which workers who create new value and directly fill the state treasury fare significantly worse than those who are financed from that same treasury. While the private sector fights daily battles with market turbulence, chases productivity, and fears for every euro, the public sector enjoys financial security and salaries that are on average a huge 600 euros higher.

In the long term, this kind of economic imbalance is simply unsustainable because it deeply demotivates precisely those people on whose daily effort and work the survival of society as a whole depends. Urgent and profound changes are needed so that honest work in the private sector once again begins to pay off, and the overall financial burden is distributed more fairly among all citizens.