They have four decades of hard work behind them, but the pensions paid into their accounts today are extremely modest.

Workers who started working very young and accumulated at least 41 years of service, according to HZMO data, today receive an average of 780.68 euros. Even those with the longest working lives fail to reach the amount of 900 euros, at least on average.

Who are long-term insured persons?

To understand this problem, we must first clarify who belongs to this specific group. A long-term insured person is someone who becomes entitled to a pension upon reaching 60 years of age and accumulating 41 years of service, writes the portal mojevrijeme.hr.

It is crucial to emphasize that only actual years of service are counted in those 41 years.

Put simply, this means that only the time a person actually spent working and paying pension contributions is taken into account. There are no added years spent studying, nor those years that in some professions are counted double due to difficult working conditions. Such workers most often entered the labor market immediately after finishing secondary school, and they have a long and uninterrupted working life behind them.

Facts that surprise the public

It is interesting and somewhat disheartening that within this group of the most hardworking workers, the long-term insured, there are no large pensions at all. The amounts increase extremely slowly with each additional year of work, which is a fact that often shocks the public.

Those with up to 41 years of service receive an average of 746.44 euros, states the portal mojevrijeme.hr. Individuals who worked an incredible 46 years and more receive on average only 897.22 euros.

In everyday conversations, citizens often confuse long-term workers with those who started working later but managed to accumulate 40 or more years of service by the age of 65. For this second group, various benefits and added service are also included in the calculation, which significantly changes the final financial amount in their accounts.

When we compare these two groups, we arrive at a real absurdity. The pensions of workers who started working early and have 41 years of actual service are noticeably lower than the pensions of regular old-age retirees with 40 and more years of service. The average for these regular retirees amounts to a significantly higher 1,005.72 euros.

The reason for this large financial disparity is very simple to understand for those who are not involved in economics. People who enter the labor market exceptionally early very often perform physically demanding jobs and jobs for lower-qualified workers. Due to the nature of their occupation, their wages were low throughout their entire working lives. Since the pension in our system is calculated directly on the basis of contributions from salary, not even an exceptionally long working life can ensure them high income in old age.