Serbia Teacher Salaries Fall 3,172 Dinars Short of Average

Average pay in education came to 117,229 dinars in June, according to data from the Statistical Office of the Republic of Serbia (RZS), while the national average for the same month stood at 120,401 dinars. The gap of 3,172 dinars greets education workers just as the new school year begins on Monday, September 1.

That is the case despite education having posted the largest cumulative wage growth of any public sector branch over the past two years: 28.6%, according to the Ministry of Finance. The increases came in four rounds: 11% in January 2025, five percent each in March and October 2025, and another 5.1% in January 2026. No further increase has been announced for the rest of 2026.

The package met its stated goal, briefly, once. In October 2025, average pay in education reached 111,796 dinars while the national average was 110,670 dinars, putting education above the average for that single month. In every other month, before and after, it fell short.

What about starting pay?

Education Minister Dejan Vuk Stankovic said a few days ago that a starting salary for a teacher in primary or secondary education, with no work experience, comes to around 114,000 dinars, which he said is nearly on par with the country’s average take-home pay. Education unions pushed back, arguing the minister’s figure is wrong: by their calculation, starting pay is 111,488 dinars, or 8,913 dinars, 7.4% below the national average.

The Education Workers’ Union Confederation of Serbia said in a statement:

A difference of several thousand dinars might look like a rounding error to the minister. For a teacher living off that salary, it is not.

The Confederation added that the 135,000 dinar figure the minister cites for teachers with longer service and homeroom duties comes from adding a seniority bonus and a seven percent homeroom allowance on top of the base salary, not from a higher base pay rate. A teacher with 30 years of service, the Confederation said, is not a beginning teacher, and neither the seniority bonus nor the homeroom allowance count as part of the base salary.

A fifteen-year wage squeeze

Dusan Kokot, president of the Independent Union of Education Workers of Serbia, told Biznis.rs that the gap between education and the national average is not accidental, but the result of a long decline in the profession’s relative standing:

If an education worker had close to three times the minimum wage as their base salary in 2012, and today has only 1.55 times the minimum wage, can we even talk about having any status at all?

He said around 90% of education employees hold a higher education degree, while the national average includes workers with only secondary schooling, who tend to be paid less. That makes comparing education pay to the broader labor market harder still.

Kokot told Biznis.rs: “Every year the salary gets lower and lower, all the data shows that.” He warned about where the trend is heading: “We have to think not just about the salaries themselves, but about the ratio between them.”

Two years ago, the union proposed tying education salaries to the minimum wage through a fixed coefficient, for example a professor earning 2.3 times the minimum wage, so that any rise in the minimum wage would automatically pull education pay up with it. The proposal has not been adopted.

What comes next in January

A 9.2% increase to the minimum wage has been announced for January 1, 2027. Kokot said he doubts there is a real chance the education pay base will rise by the same percentage, and noted that every minimum wage increase also pushes up the national average, making it harder for education to catch up. No official proposal on education pay increases for 2027 exists yet.

On July 2, the Education Workers’ Union Confederation of Serbia asked Serbian Prime Minister Djuro Macut for an urgent correction to the base used to calculate and pay wages, citing the Special Collective Agreement for employees of primary and secondary schools and student dormitories. That agreement states that if the base salary of employees with higher education falls below the national average after the end of the second quarter, negotiations on a correction should open. The union says it has received no response in nearly two months and is now demanding urgent action.

On top of low pay, unions also point out that a large number of school employees remain on fixed-term contracts, which complicates staffing plans just as the new school year gets under way.