Fewer employers plan to raise wages this year than last year

By: Trademagazin Date: 2026. 02. 16. 11:29

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Employers’ wage development plans for this year are more cautious than last year. While on average nearly two-thirds of companies planned wage development in advance for 2025, only 55% of companies are counting on it this year. In contrast, the vast majority of employees (82%) expect their salaries or fringe benefits to increase in 2026, according to a recent survey by Profession.hu involving 449 companies and based on a sample of 1,000 people representative of the Hungarian population.

Profession.hu annually examines the wage development plans and reasons of domestic companies. In recent years, the trend has been that the vast majority of companies planning wage increases actually carry them out, and in fact, more employers end up doing so than they had previously counted on. Last year, 60% of companies calculated a wage increase in advance, and 72% of them eventually did so. This year, companies are significantly more cautious than in the past few years: in addition to fewer companies planning to implement a general wage adjustment, the average value of this has also decreased from 8% last year to 7%.

Increasing the minimum wage is a determining factor

Companies’ most common goal with wage increases is to compensate for employees’ living costs (67%). The increase in the minimum wage announced at the end of last year also has a significant impact on this year’s wage increase plans, it is the second most frequently mentioned goal: in the case of four out of ten companies, this factor played a role in whether they have touched or will touch wages. For a quarter of companies, wage growth is also related to the economic situation.

Of those employers who generally increased their employees’ wage packages last year and expect to do so again this year, 22% plan a higher amount, 33% a lower amount compared to last year, while 46% expect no change in this regard.

Half of employees received a salary increase

66% of employees had their salary package increased in 2025, which is only a minimal decrease compared to 2024 (63%). As last year, employee expectations are high at the beginning of this year: eight out of ten expect improvements in some element of their salary package in 2026, and half of employees expect a salary increase. According to one-third of them, this will be a net amount of around 20 thousand forints, another third expect a net value between 20 and 50 thousand forints, while the rest calculate more than this. The employees surveyed are less optimistic about their satisfaction with the amount of their salary increase: seven out of ten would expect a higher increase than they think they will receive this year.

“The research supported the labor market trend that companies are waiting, planning more cautiously in terms of recruitment as well as salary increases. The increase in the minimum wage significantly overrode the preliminary plans of several employers for this year – four out of ten of them increased salaries at least partly because of this. Compliance with the wage transparency directive also affects many companies, for which many will have to start preparing this year at the latest. Even with these factors, the proportion of companies planning to expand their salary packages is 5 percentage points lower than last year”

– said Blanka Dencső, CEO of Profession.hu market research and business development expert.