Serbia Sets 2027 Minimum Wage at 405 Dinars an Hour
The government decided on 20 August after the social partners failed to agree, and published it in the Official Gazette. The rise is 9.2 percent, and the monthly figure depends on working hours.
The minimum wage in Serbia for the period from January to December 2027 will be 405 dinars per working hour, before tax and mandatory social security contributions. The Serbian government took the decision at its session on 20 August and published it in the Official Gazette, closing a round of bargaining that began on 10 August.
Against the current rate of 371 dinars an hour, that is a rise of 9.2 percent. The tax-free portion of wages rises by the same percentage, from 34,221 to 37,369 dinars.
Why the government decided rather than the social partners
Under the Labour Law, the minimum wage is first put to the social partners, meaning representatives of the government, the trade unions and the employers, sitting in the Social and Economic Council. If they cannot agree, the government sets the figure itself, with a deadline of 15 September.
They did not agree. The Council’s session on 18 August ended without consent: the unions wanted the minimum wage to reach 650 euros, while the employers accepted the percentage the government had proposed. The union representative Milos Miljkovic said the 9.2 percent rise was insufficient and should have been in double digits. From the other side, Nebojsa Atanackovic, honorary president of the Union of Employers, said 46 percent of the members it surveyed did not support even this increase.
The 70,470 figure is an average, not a monthly payslip
The number most widely quoted, 70,470 dinars, is accurate but easily misread. It is not the sum a worker on the minimum wage receives every month. It is the average across twelve months, calculated on an average of 174 working hours a month. The previous average, at 371 dinars an hour, was 64,554 dinars.
What actually lands in a given month depends on how many working hours that particular month holds. In a month of 160 working hours the minimum wage is 64,800 dinars, and in a month of 184 hours it is 74,520 dinars. The gap between the shortest and the longest month is therefore close to 10,000 dinars on an unchanged hourly rate.
Converted at a rate hovering around 117 dinars to the euro, the average of 70,470 dinars is roughly 600 euros. That is a net figure, the sum in hand, before the tax and contributions paid by the employer are added on top.
Where this rise sits in the sequence
Finance Minister Sinisa Mali told the Social and Economic Council session the order of the previous moves: 13.7 percent from 1 January 2025, an extraordinary 9.4 percent from 1 October 2025, then 10.1 percent from 1 January this year, and now 9.2 percent from January next. On his arithmetic that amounts to a nominal increase in the minimum wage of 49.4 percent over twenty four months, or 33.5 percent once inflation is stripped out.
On the figures he gave at the time, fewer than 100,000 workers in Serbia are paid the minimum wage, and under the new rate its coverage of the minimum consumer basket would climb to 117 percent.
What it means for employers
The new rate applies from 1 January 2027 and covers every employee whose pay is calculated on the minimum wage. Employers have until then to adjust their payroll calculations, because both the hourly rate and the tax-free threshold change, and both feed into the calculation of tax and contributions.
The longer-term target the state set earlier, a minimum wage of 650 euros by the end of 2027, is not met by this decision and for now carries no firm date. The distance between roughly 600 euros today and that target means a further increase during 2027 would be needed for the promise to be kept within the stated deadline.
