This amount splits Poland in half. You make more money? You're in the richer half of the country

The Central Statistical Office has published the latest data, which shed a completely fresh light on Polish earnings. The key indicator here is the median wage, the amount that divides the workers into 2 equal parts – those who gain more, and those who gain less. As of January 2025, this limit is PLN 6882.80 gross, which translates into about PLN 5021 net (in hand). If your monthly income exceeds this threshold, you are officially part of a better earner half of society. This is information that may surprise many, especially in the context of the regularly administered national average, which is much higher. fresh CSO data, late published, yet let to see a more realistic image of the Polish labour marketplace and realize where our salaries are truly placed against the remainder of the country. The difference between the media and the average is immense and shows the scale of wage inequality in Poland.

Average wage and reality. Why was GUS data confusing?

For many years, the only well-known indicator of the level of earnings in Poland was the arithmetic average, i.e. the alleged average salary. Although it is simply a simple indicator to calculate, it has 1 fundamental drawback: it is highly delicate to highly advanced earnings. In practice, this means that salaries of a tiny group of top earners managers, professionals and CEOs they are importantly inflating the national average. As a result, most Poles gain well below the amount given in monthly GUS messages. Currently, the average remuneration in the enterprise sector is PLN 8881.84 gross, which for many workers remains only a dream.

This problem perfectly illustrates the broader context of economical inequality. Tools specified as Gini's factor, even though they point to slow simplification of disparities in Poland, inactive place us above the EU average. Moreover, these data may be distorted by the common “creativity” in employment forms in Poland. This is why relying solely on the average wage led to misconceptions about the financial condition of a typical Polish household. Only the introduction of regular media publication of wages by the CSO allowed for deeper and more precise analysis.

Median earnings, which means a real image of the wallets of Poles. Here's the latest data

In consequence to the arithmetic mean limitations, Since mid-2024, the Central Statistical Office has been regularly publishing median salaries. Median is the central value – precisely half of the employees gain below this amount and the another half above. This indicator is much more resistant to utmost values and so much better reflects how much a "typical" Pole actually earns. The latest data on January 2025 confirm a immense gap between what we know from statistic and reality.

It turns out that the median wage in the national economy was PLN 6882.80 gross. For a individual employed on a contract of employment, this means a net wage of approximately PLN 5021. The comparison of this amount with the average wage is devastating – the median is below the average by 22.5%, almost a quarter. This shows that the distribution of wages in Poland is far from equal, and most workers can only dream of reaching the “national average” ceiling. The introduction of the media to the public debate is simply a breakthrough that exposes the story of advanced earnings and allows for a more reliable assessment of the material situation of Poles.

Surprising wage differences. Who in Poland earns the most?

A detailed analysis of the remuneration media data reveals even more fascinating and frequently amazing regularity. 1 of the biggest surprises is that Median earnings in the public sector (the alleged budget) are higher than in the private sector. This difference is as much as PLN 692,57 in favour of the employees of the budget sphere, which is contrary to the common belief that it is in private companies that they gain better. Data besides confirms the existence of a sex pay gap. The median earnings of men amounted to PLN 7032.61 gross and was PLN 298.27 higher than for women.

Analysis of the GUS besides shows a clear variation due to age. The highest median wages were recorded in the age group 35-44 (7196.56 zł), while the youngest employees, under the age of 24, had to settle for a median of PLN 5474.54 gross. As far as the manufacture with the highest wages is concerned, the average wage data is inactive a good indicator:

• The highest average wage was recorded in the section Information and communication, where it amounted to as much as PLN 13 847.46 gross.
• In the public sector the leader turned out to be a section Agriculture, forestry, hunting and fishing with an astronomical average of PLN 18 902,14.
• The private sector was dominated by the manufacture Mining and mining with an average wage of PLN 16,710.22.

What don't GUS statistic show? B2B contract trap

Although the data on remuneration media represent a immense step forward within the meaning of the Polish labour market, it is crucial to keep in head their crucial limitations. The GUS survey includes salaries for employment relations, business relations and popular civilian law contracts (order, work). Unfortunately, these statistic do not take into account the income of single-person economical activity (JDG), i.e. working on B2B contracts.

This is simply a key gap, due to the fact that it is in self-employment that many top-paid professionals, managers and experts from industries specified as IT, law or medicine work. Their income, frequently well above even the highest salaries on employment contracts, is not included in the overall wage statistics. This phenomenon is exacerbated by the fact that companies "pull" workers into self-employment in order to optimise costs. The scale of this phenomenon is shown by hard data: in the first 4th of 2025, one-person activities accounted for 82.4% of all recently established companies, and at the end of 2024, as many as 2.78 million specified entities were active in Poland. This means that real income inequality, especially at the top of the earnings ladder, is most likely even bigger than even the latest and most precise GUS data suggest.