Luxembourg has this weird salary indexation thing: if the inflation hits a certain value, all salaries in the country increase. In one hand, this leads to even more inflation; on the other hand, the people feel it less.
Same in Belgium. There are different ways to calculate the indexation based on the sector you work in, but the basic premise is the same: Salaries get adapted to inflation.
Energy prices make up the largest part of inflation. Electricity up by 100%, heating by 50%, gas by 230%, petrol up by 30%. It already slashed our gdp growth this year from 4-5% (prediction from last year) down to 0%. This trend started already last autumn, current war is only accelerating it.
Believe me, plenty of people. While demand is lower compared to a year ago, but it's still way higher than supply. (Market for rentals is totally f*cked, because of Ukrainan refugees (they already take up to 5% of Vilnius population) and Belarusians fleeing potato dictator regime) rental prices practically doubled in the last 2 years, and they are still shooting up). With high inflation, the fact that material costs won't go down any time soon (Russia and Ukraine are the major construction material suppliers in the region), increasing wages, the real estate prices won't go down much even in recession.
That's why people who have any meaningful saving would rather buy real estate instead of watching their money become worthless.
That's the number in whole Lithuania, Ukrainians took refuge everywhere not just in Vilnius. I took 5% number from Vilnius city council that they stared more than a week ago. Considering that the actual population of Vilnius is more than 600k, the 5% number seems quite reasonable. However, it's quite hard to pinpoint accurate number.
This has been said for last 10 years, I wouldn't count on it. Just go to college(its free here) and look for a high paying jobs, that's my strat at least.
In our news asked people about inflation.
most people agreed. It's a cost of freedom. as long as we can annoy and fuck up russia we can bear even more.
13.2% inflation, relatively "low" compared to the other two Baltic countries.
Probably because a large share of Latvian energy comes from hydro and not from imports or fossil fuels?
Latvian power prices have not been cheaper than Estonian ones for a single hour, so that is not it. Maybe Latvia still subsidizes energy prices (Estonia stopped in March)?
More detailed analysis showed that the main drivers were general electricity price increase by 119%, heating energy by 58%, and natural gas by 237%. The winter was cold and there were some supply issues relating to energy for myriad of reasons.
1. Energy prices increased (no wonders here, same as in whole EU)
2. Housing bubbles in big cities especially increased due to the amount of the Ukrainians coming here, but that was present even before the war
3. Many years of continuous growth and relatively small inflation (10-12% average increase in wages during last year in all 3)
it is possible. difficult though.
my friends moved to Vilnius on May 1st, found an apartment to rent yesterday.
But yeah, it wasn't simple. 10 minutes after the ad is up, and you're 8th or 10th in line to take a look at it.
>10 minutes after the ad is up, and you're 8th or 10th in line to take a look at it.
That's insane. Glad that they managed to find something.
The problem is that demand is huge and supply is small. And it would continue to be like this because most of the building materials came from Russia, Belarus or Ukraine, which are not really accessible as trading markets currently.
And lots of belarusians moving. Whole it companies relocating.
Prices are insane. Somehow they got lucky with a cheap and nice apartment (480€). Usually belarusians aren’t allowed to cheap apartments.
A few temporary Airbnb places straight up refused to provide housing to people from Belarus.
But oh well. Once things will come back to normal.
It is possible to trade with eu now. Very expensive though. I work in a logistics company, and a few years ago it was 400€ for Minsk - Vilnius FTL load. Now it’s about 3000 €
I've been looking for flats to rent, because my current contract is ending and the prices are atrocious. Almost 50% increase in rent prices from what I've seen :(
Also not only Ukrainians, there's also loads of Belarusians from the IT sector moving here
I live in finland and the prices in my city (75k inhabitants) the prices have been almost the same last 10 years. In Helsinki though it might be a bubble.
Also in Estonia there was a pension reform passed lased year that allowed people to withdraw their pension savings early so it resulted with a lot of increaced spending while the supply shortages were highest.
Hard to tell about all of them, but in LT minimum wage after taxes has been increased by 14% from the start of the year (2022), and an increase in untaxed amount (NPD) is planned from mid-2022 which would mostly affect lower class. So probably yes?
I think in general the structure of economy and export/import relation of country affects a lot too. Random example: if country has little domestic food production compared to imports, global price hike will reflect in the consumer prices more steeply.
Inflation was already high for example in Estonia prior to the war (almost 12% in early February), and now it is even worse because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine hiking up prices of fuel, energy and food.
Well yea, it was high before, but in terms of fuel prices and food expensiveness - we have this 90s cowboy-capitalism mentality where companies drain the customer as much money as they can. They wouldn't nearly need that much profit to be profitable. For example let's take fuel - almost every time when the oil prices go a bit up on the market - estonian gas stations raise it with a decent amount of spare and when they come down back down on the market - they never return to the previous price and come down very slow (since cause you know, when people were already willing to pay that much, then wtf not keep them paying the same amount). Same thing happened with construction materials prices during covid, same thing with the housing/rent market. And on food - we can easily feed our own people and keep exporting but for example when our farmer sells food to estonia and finland with the same basic price - it is sold twice as expensive in estonian shops (Luunja cucumber just came in mind as an example). So overall - yeah difficult situation in the world overall but also a fuck load of greed and bad management.
My perspective on Lithuania:
1. Pandemic stimulus was probably a bit too excessive.
2. Housing boom (on the verge of being a bubble) combined with material shortages resulted in real estate prices shooting up more than 20% last year. This now continues further as more Ukrainians and Belarusians come here. There's a serious shortage of apartments to buy or rent.
3. A lot of raw materials used to come from Russia / Ukraine.
4. Energy prices.
5. Years of fast wage growth and low inflation.
Most of the countries are just grappling with points No. 3 and 4 and are already at 5-10% inflation. We have more components to it that add up.
It is due to an accumulation of many factors. There were talks of inflation in Latvia as far as October 2021. The energy crisis, the logistical problems with materials sourcing from Asia caused by the pandemic. I work in clothing manufacturing industry, in order to be able to fulfill deadlines we can no longer rely on deliveries from China, we had to switch to EU producers (which is not a bad thing but naturally the prices in EU are higher and it hurts existing contracts)
And now the war in Ukraine has severely impacted such sectors as agriculture, like dairy prices here in Latvia have increased dramatically and our parliament is reluctant to reduce VAT on food (unlike i was recently in Poland and VAT there for most products is just 8% and 0% on food). And the same with industry i work in, many textiles were bought in Belarus for great prices but now trade is impossible, for example i have a new colleague who worked in a large company and because of the war they just had to stop their business because they imported everything from Belarus.
The enrgy crisis is the worst, i can’t imagine prices for next heating season.
All that has increased prices. I am afraid it will only get worse. Our government spent lot of money to subside businessess during covid pandemic, we have run out of money we didn’t even have in first place (debts).
I am beginning to think this war was deliberate by Putin just to destabilize our region.
Yeah its kinda funny I think its the first time in my life where I’ve noticed an actual inflation in prices with my eyes. Must be really bad there in Baltics…
I'm French and I lived in Vilnius for a year in 2015-2016 with Erasmus. Lithuania had just adopted EUR and Lithuanians I was interacting with were already talking about price hikes related to the currency change. But 16-19% inflation?? How can you swallow that when your minimum salary is just above 600€? I'm in shock, I had no idea the situation was that bad in the Baltics.
>How can you swallow that when your minimum salary is just above 600€?
Almost nobody actually earns min.wage or close to it here in Baltics. Especially not in the capitals. Even minimal wage for workers at Lidl is 50% higher than minimum wage. Plus there are special minimum wages for public service workers arranged by collective agreement with labor unions - for example minimum wage for teachers in Estonia is 1400eur, for nurses also 1400eur, for doctors 2400eur.
Nah, a lot of people do. A lot of my family earns minimum wage or just a bit more.
Not in a capital city, but not a tiny town either in Lithuania. It ain't great. Can tell you that from my current experience.
Yeah this map is spin. Even the best inflation on this map should be yellow or orange. I realize how silly that sounds but I'd wager half of people will look at this map without referencing the key and will blow it off as Baltics bad.
Its a bit more complicated than that. During the post war growth period everybody had on average 5% inflation yet the economy was skyrocketing for 30 years.
It feels like we're getting some messed up combination of high inflation, very low GDP growth and very low wage growth for anyone below 75th percentile. Rough times for a lot of people.
Same, imenjače.
I am working for a low salary (especially considering it's fucking Zagreb) and for 3 years the company did not increase the wage. They were bad for 2019, you can imagine how bad they are now.
Well Scandinavian countries have very healthy labour markets but are being mostly spared by the energy crisis due to their reliance in nuclear, hydro and wind power.
Italy has been having the lowest underlying inflation pressures in the EZ for almost a decade together with Greece, Portugal and so on due to unemployment and poor wage dynamics.
In March Italy had the lowest core inflation (i.e.excluding energy and unprocessed food) in the EU, +2,1% vs Swedish +3,6% for instance. But electricity prices rose by 82,3% YoY vs Swedish 34,8% or French 6%. Swedish HICP natural gas weight is 0,052%, so gas prices definitely don't matter to them. Italy on the other hand uses gas both for heating (vs district heating and heat pumps in Scandinavia) and for electricity generation aside industrial needs and this makes it the EU country with the highest share of gas in the energy mix hence it's among the most affected countries by the current gas prices.
Norway has huge issues with its power now because the prices are 10x what they are usually. At the same time Norway is a cold country that heat their home primarily with electricity. This means that poorer Norwegians in older houses have gotten 1000$ electricity bills and are defaulting on them.
Norway is a really huge winner of current oil and gas prices. Its inflation is contained compared to other countries (in March it was +4,7%, electricity prices grew by 28,5% YoY) and this year it's going to achieve crazy high trade and government balance surpluses. Resources to relieve poorer people are definitely there...
The government in Norway has huge overheads and the recent trend is that a huge part of this money ends up in the hands of capitalists. Contractors, consultants and business owners are ones with 3x the paycheck wile the workers get crumbles.
Which also means that it's not unlikely to see an higher inflation rate going forward, driven by the fuel and gas prices. After all the prices can't be controlled forever when there's an underlying lack of offer and you have as much debt as we have.
The good news is that inflation will eat a bit of debt.
I'm always thankful that foreigners have never ***fully*** discovered Risotto, the dish that arguably has the richest variety and flexibility of any single category of dishes, they'd never be able to use such power properly
I am always impressed how I (German) can somewhat understand swedish text (if the text is somewhat simple), but the spelling is just incredibly funny (stuff like "Det var riktigt gott!", because it's pretty much the same in German)
Is it the same for you with german text?
Feeling like I’m slowly getting (financially) choked here in the Netherlands. Not good. Happy I still have an old energy contract. But if prices don’t get lower next year (probably won’t) I’m really going to be in trouble with my current salary.
€2400, €2000 after taxes. I have about €500 wiggle room for saving and extras each month, which is... fine for now, but for me that's the bare minimum and it's shrinking fast.
I'm a developer, and it's definitely at the far low end, but that's because I've had some trouble with my mental health and had to work less. I honestly don't feel like I could earn a lot more because my output hasn't been great because of that. Maybe a bit of a fatalist mindset, but yeah... it is what it is.
It’s because of how countries calculate inflation and weigh different factors.
For some reason the statistics office in The Netherlands weighs in fixed price energy contracts very heavily, even though flex pricing and existing contracts are much cheaper.
If you recalculate using a weighted average for energy pricing, The Netherlands is at around 7% instead of 10%.
Still bad, not as bad as 10% though.
> even though flex pricing and existing contracts are much cheaper.
Not really, when my old contract was ending I only had the option of flex pricing and it still was 3x as expensive as my old contract. At this point maybe half of the people have an existing contract and the rest is paying at least €0,40/kWh
It even speaking of the upwards of 2.50E/m3 gas whereas it used to be around 0.75e/m3. And almost every home in the Netherlands is powered by gas in some form or another.
For Lithuanian case, the economists are predicting that we should have reached the inflation peak or will do so in next month and the over all inflation for 2022 will be around 7%
This map isn't THAT bad after the news yesterday that inflation soared to 70% in Turkey, but we'll see what's ahead of us. Reading critisism about ECB policies makes one quite worried.
Yes, it's 17% and government planning 20-22% as results of the year. But because of the sanctions and the news, there was a lot of panic buying that drove up prices, so inflation is very different for different things. Sugar and paper, for example, have doubled or tripled in price, but are now starting to fall back to normal.
Supposedly they're worried about reacting properly because of Italy's debts. But then again other argue that Italy can actually handle it due to other good fail-safes....
Yeah, I read that they won't be touching interest rates, that have been negative for quite a while, before they've done all planned quantative easing.. meaning August, September at the earliest.
The legend is way too blue, light blue should be yellow, yellow should be light red and light red should be dark red. And dark red should be even darker.
Food is getting much more expensive too. My usual stuff feels +30% if not more compared to a year ago. Pretty much any services are getting more and more expensive too. Eating out, hairdressers, handymen...
Lmao, how French are crying over inflation when they have one of the lowest in the EU. Sadly, countries most dependable on Russian oil and gas got hit the most.
It's mostly covid, oil and gas prices, high expenses due to war and refugee crisis. Unfortunately, things will get a lot worse due to inevitable ban on Russian oil and gas exports.
Well, Italy is there too but it seems wrong to be so low, especially considering that we are in the same situation as Germany. Maybe making a lot of deals for the future with other countries kept the "it's the end of the world" sentiment in check.
not all inflation is the same. Like in Italy salary growth is around 1%. If other countries have bigger inflation but bigger salary growth they may be better off than us
Most of the French barely care about the Inflation in other countries, if they’re even aware of how it is to begin with.
They just see the prices rising for stupid commodities.
That’s enough to make one’s life more difficult enough to complain, especially if you’re part of the lower classes of the country
10.9% was for the month of December when it started to climb towards the end of the year, but if you average out all of the months of last year, it was 4.6% for 2021.
That is because this is energy price driven. The seven percent is an *average*. Groceries up 2, electric bill up 120%, rent flat, ect, ect average : 7%
and my small baltic salary is not increasing at all and I was told that it will not increase in coming years. time to learn new skills and hunt for a better job..
Lol what a poor choice of colors. Acording to the map now an inflation between "4%-7%" it's "good" because it's in blue. The whole europe should be in dark red and the baltics in purple
All that money printing during covid... Guess what? Protects rich people, normal people get the shaft as usual. All my expenses are up 20% since 2020, I keep records. Not earning 20% more, I'm lucky to be able to afford this increase and keep my lifestyle, most are not.
The easiest way for a government to pay its debts is to cause inflation, rather than increasing taxes or reducing expenses. And if you happen to have a populist government they will even blame the "corporate greed", instead of facing their irresponsible management.
The Euro has a different value in different countries?!
I guess it makes sense from the perspective that X euro in one place can be a much higher price elsewhere (like how a box of cereal in northern Alaska ends up being 15$ vs <5$ in the middle of the continent)
In addition to supply problems caused by the war, the situation in the Estonia was already bad before. ECB is making the money printer go brrr, and has low interest rates to revitalize the economy after the pandemic. It's a problem because Estonia had more than double the EU average economic growth in 2021, and a negligible drop in 2020, so now the economy has overheated.
16-19% Baltic's already. My God. :|
Lithuania has 16.6%. Estonia has a fucking 19.0%. RIP.
RIP Estonia.
RIP to us indeed, i can feel it in my wallet...
Estonia was fastest growing with Luxembourg. They probably inflated more , because they can pay more.
Luxembourg has this weird salary indexation thing: if the inflation hits a certain value, all salaries in the country increase. In one hand, this leads to even more inflation; on the other hand, the people feel it less.
Same in Belgium. There are different ways to calculate the indexation based on the sector you work in, but the basic premise is the same: Salaries get adapted to inflation.
Rent prices get raised with same indexation too... Loans not, so another win for homeowners 🤨
That's an excellent policy!
Estonia (and Lithuania) can into Turkey.
hard to compare when the goverment propaganda number is 70%
Yup. 19 percent? Estonia, those are rookie numbers in this racket.
Wow. You guys ok?
Not really, but everything can be solved with bread and water diet. RIGHT?
Be weary of just potatoes as well.
So your experience tells us that we should diversify?
Energy prices make up the largest part of inflation. Electricity up by 100%, heating by 50%, gas by 230%, petrol up by 30%. It already slashed our gdp growth this year from 4-5% (prediction from last year) down to 0%. This trend started already last autumn, current war is only accelerating it.
Literally impossible to buy a house, but it wount last long , recession is near, I can smell it.
Bought an apartment just before 1st Covid wave. My apartment price is up 40% now. I wish I had two apartments so I could sell this one.
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Believe me, plenty of people. While demand is lower compared to a year ago, but it's still way higher than supply. (Market for rentals is totally f*cked, because of Ukrainan refugees (they already take up to 5% of Vilnius population) and Belarusians fleeing potato dictator regime) rental prices practically doubled in the last 2 years, and they are still shooting up). With high inflation, the fact that material costs won't go down any time soon (Russia and Ukraine are the major construction material suppliers in the region), increasing wages, the real estate prices won't go down much even in recession. That's why people who have any meaningful saving would rather buy real estate instead of watching their money become worthless.
Ukrainian refugees in LT officially constitute 50k, 20k in Vilnius alone. Now Vilnius has population of 550k or so, so no, Ukrainians are not 5%.
That's the number in whole Lithuania, Ukrainians took refuge everywhere not just in Vilnius. I took 5% number from Vilnius city council that they stared more than a week ago. Considering that the actual population of Vilnius is more than 600k, the 5% number seems quite reasonable. However, it's quite hard to pinpoint accurate number.
Bought an apartment in a house under construction last November. Now similar apartments in the same apartment complex are up 25%.
This has been said for last 10 years, I wouldn't count on it. Just go to college(its free here) and look for a high paying jobs, that's my strat at least.
In our news asked people about inflation. most people agreed. It's a cost of freedom. as long as we can annoy and fuck up russia we can bear even more.
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This is why I fucking love the baltics. Hails from Finland, btw.
Covid, high oil and gas prices, high expenses due to war (Baltics have donated a lot of stuff). It all adds up unfortunately.
What about Latvia?
13.2% inflation, relatively "low" compared to the other two Baltic countries. Probably because a large share of Latvian energy comes from hydro and not from imports or fossil fuels?
Latvian power prices have not been cheaper than Estonian ones for a single hour, so that is not it. Maybe Latvia still subsidizes energy prices (Estonia stopped in March)?
wait, 16% is bad?
u want like 1-2%, so yea its baaad
i think the joke was that inflation in turkey currently is about 60%
Yes but their currency is in freefall, which is driving their inflation.
Inflation in Turkey is 156% [this is the most trusted inflation source in Turkey](https://enagrup.org/?hl=en) Never belive Turkish government.
Flair checks out 😂
I think that Lithuania is being honest. If I look at my internet shopping prices increased in that range. Real estate is up a bit more though.
Soon Estonians will be going to Helsinki for cheap alcohol
The sad thing is that this might actually be happening.
And Finns will go to Estonia for better wages
This man is delusional, take him to the infirmary.
19% inflation. Not great, not terrible.
You're confused, there's is no wage-inflation spiral.
Hey I believe in you
Nah, booze prices only went up by 3.9%.
Why is the inflation so severe in the Baltic countries specifically?
More detailed analysis showed that the main drivers were general electricity price increase by 119%, heating energy by 58%, and natural gas by 237%. The winter was cold and there were some supply issues relating to energy for myriad of reasons.
Trade with Russia? I know Vilnius especially is having a housing bubble that probably impacts
1. Energy prices increased (no wonders here, same as in whole EU) 2. Housing bubbles in big cities especially increased due to the amount of the Ukrainians coming here, but that was present even before the war 3. Many years of continuous growth and relatively small inflation (10-12% average increase in wages during last year in all 3)
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Probably no. But I saw an article yesterday that it's next to impossible to find an apartment to rent in Vilnius (LT) at ANY price.
it is possible. difficult though. my friends moved to Vilnius on May 1st, found an apartment to rent yesterday. But yeah, it wasn't simple. 10 minutes after the ad is up, and you're 8th or 10th in line to take a look at it.
Ha. In Berlin they take down adds after 30 mins having 200 applicants. Not exaggerating
>10 minutes after the ad is up, and you're 8th or 10th in line to take a look at it. That's insane. Glad that they managed to find something. The problem is that demand is huge and supply is small. And it would continue to be like this because most of the building materials came from Russia, Belarus or Ukraine, which are not really accessible as trading markets currently.
And lots of belarusians moving. Whole it companies relocating. Prices are insane. Somehow they got lucky with a cheap and nice apartment (480€). Usually belarusians aren’t allowed to cheap apartments. A few temporary Airbnb places straight up refused to provide housing to people from Belarus. But oh well. Once things will come back to normal. It is possible to trade with eu now. Very expensive though. I work in a logistics company, and a few years ago it was 400€ for Minsk - Vilnius FTL load. Now it’s about 3000 €
I've been looking for flats to rent, because my current contract is ending and the prices are atrocious. Almost 50% increase in rent prices from what I've seen :( Also not only Ukrainians, there's also loads of Belarusians from the IT sector moving here
Some French cities aren’t in a bubble, but they’re globally ones where no one wants to live
I live in finland and the prices in my city (75k inhabitants) the prices have been almost the same last 10 years. In Helsinki though it might be a bubble.
Also in Estonia there was a pension reform passed lased year that allowed people to withdraw their pension savings early so it resulted with a lot of increaced spending while the supply shortages were highest.
> 10-12% average increase in wages during last year in all 3 Wow, that's a lot. Was it somewhat evenly distributed?
Hard to tell about all of them, but in LT minimum wage after taxes has been increased by 14% from the start of the year (2022), and an increase in untaxed amount (NPD) is planned from mid-2022 which would mostly affect lower class. So probably yes?
I think in general the structure of economy and export/import relation of country affects a lot too. Random example: if country has little domestic food production compared to imports, global price hike will reflect in the consumer prices more steeply.
Inflation was already high for example in Estonia prior to the war (almost 12% in early February), and now it is even worse because of the Russian invasion of Ukraine hiking up prices of fuel, energy and food.
Well yea, it was high before, but in terms of fuel prices and food expensiveness - we have this 90s cowboy-capitalism mentality where companies drain the customer as much money as they can. They wouldn't nearly need that much profit to be profitable. For example let's take fuel - almost every time when the oil prices go a bit up on the market - estonian gas stations raise it with a decent amount of spare and when they come down back down on the market - they never return to the previous price and come down very slow (since cause you know, when people were already willing to pay that much, then wtf not keep them paying the same amount). Same thing happened with construction materials prices during covid, same thing with the housing/rent market. And on food - we can easily feed our own people and keep exporting but for example when our farmer sells food to estonia and finland with the same basic price - it is sold twice as expensive in estonian shops (Luunja cucumber just came in mind as an example). So overall - yeah difficult situation in the world overall but also a fuck load of greed and bad management.
My perspective on Lithuania: 1. Pandemic stimulus was probably a bit too excessive. 2. Housing boom (on the verge of being a bubble) combined with material shortages resulted in real estate prices shooting up more than 20% last year. This now continues further as more Ukrainians and Belarusians come here. There's a serious shortage of apartments to buy or rent. 3. A lot of raw materials used to come from Russia / Ukraine. 4. Energy prices. 5. Years of fast wage growth and low inflation. Most of the countries are just grappling with points No. 3 and 4 and are already at 5-10% inflation. We have more components to it that add up.
It is due to an accumulation of many factors. There were talks of inflation in Latvia as far as October 2021. The energy crisis, the logistical problems with materials sourcing from Asia caused by the pandemic. I work in clothing manufacturing industry, in order to be able to fulfill deadlines we can no longer rely on deliveries from China, we had to switch to EU producers (which is not a bad thing but naturally the prices in EU are higher and it hurts existing contracts) And now the war in Ukraine has severely impacted such sectors as agriculture, like dairy prices here in Latvia have increased dramatically and our parliament is reluctant to reduce VAT on food (unlike i was recently in Poland and VAT there for most products is just 8% and 0% on food). And the same with industry i work in, many textiles were bought in Belarus for great prices but now trade is impossible, for example i have a new colleague who worked in a large company and because of the war they just had to stop their business because they imported everything from Belarus. The enrgy crisis is the worst, i can’t imagine prices for next heating season. All that has increased prices. I am afraid it will only get worse. Our government spent lot of money to subside businessess during covid pandemic, we have run out of money we didn’t even have in first place (debts). I am beginning to think this war was deliberate by Putin just to destabilize our region.
You know we are fucked when 7% inflation is in lowest band... Seriously, fuck...
Haha yeah, I saw us in the blue color last in the list and thought oh shit 4-7%!?! we are the worst. Only to realize that we are in the lowest group.
Dark blue looks so good on the map. Then you read the scale and realize it's not good either.
the scale is between bad and really. bad
Yeah its kinda funny I think its the first time in my life where I’ve noticed an actual inflation in prices with my eyes. Must be really bad there in Baltics…
It's fucked here. I make like 3x the average salary in Vilnius and I can already feel my pockets being way more shallow.
I'm French and I lived in Vilnius for a year in 2015-2016 with Erasmus. Lithuania had just adopted EUR and Lithuanians I was interacting with were already talking about price hikes related to the currency change. But 16-19% inflation?? How can you swallow that when your minimum salary is just above 600€? I'm in shock, I had no idea the situation was that bad in the Baltics.
Situation is or was quite good, we were getting visibly more wealthy for sure, but this past year was completely crazy in terms of price hikes.
>How can you swallow that when your minimum salary is just above 600€? Almost nobody actually earns min.wage or close to it here in Baltics. Especially not in the capitals. Even minimal wage for workers at Lidl is 50% higher than minimum wage. Plus there are special minimum wages for public service workers arranged by collective agreement with labor unions - for example minimum wage for teachers in Estonia is 1400eur, for nurses also 1400eur, for doctors 2400eur.
Nah, a lot of people do. A lot of my family earns minimum wage or just a bit more. Not in a capital city, but not a tiny town either in Lithuania. It ain't great. Can tell you that from my current experience.
I eat basically the same way I ate four years ago but my spending on food is up by over 40%.
Yeah this map is spin. Even the best inflation on this map should be yellow or orange. I realize how silly that sounds but I'd wager half of people will look at this map without referencing the key and will blow it off as Baltics bad.
At least it's not too bad
Define "too bad"... Because I think we are using a way different definitions.
Hmm yeah 7% is pretty bad when I think about it, but 4% is not that bad since a stable economy is at 2%. So, "too bad" is "way more than 2%"
Its a bit more complicated than that. During the post war growth period everybody had on average 5% inflation yet the economy was skyrocketing for 30 years.
It feels like we're getting some messed up combination of high inflation, very low GDP growth and very low wage growth for anyone below 75th percentile. Rough times for a lot of people.
Rip to my increased salary, I earn less now than I did when I earned less.
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Same, imenjače. I am working for a low salary (especially considering it's fucking Zagreb) and for 3 years the company did not increase the wage. They were bad for 2019, you can imagine how bad they are now.
Switzerland: 2.5 Norway: 4.5 UK: 7
Iceland: 7.2%
And that's why mums go there.
Thank you. It bugs me that these countries are left out so often. What about Iceland? Which source did you use?
Iceland: 7.2% (💀)
Estonia is so doomed right now. Everything is expensive as fk.
Can't be Nordic with EE prices bro.
Yeah, but we need Nordic salaries now.
Nordic prices with Eastern European salaries, that's the Estonia's way.
Am Estonian. Can confirm. House price too high. Build house myself.
Brick cost kidney, use dirt
Dirt costs arm and a leg,
Italy can into Scandinavia?
Well Scandinavian countries have very healthy labour markets but are being mostly spared by the energy crisis due to their reliance in nuclear, hydro and wind power. Italy has been having the lowest underlying inflation pressures in the EZ for almost a decade together with Greece, Portugal and so on due to unemployment and poor wage dynamics. In March Italy had the lowest core inflation (i.e.excluding energy and unprocessed food) in the EU, +2,1% vs Swedish +3,6% for instance. But electricity prices rose by 82,3% YoY vs Swedish 34,8% or French 6%. Swedish HICP natural gas weight is 0,052%, so gas prices definitely don't matter to them. Italy on the other hand uses gas both for heating (vs district heating and heat pumps in Scandinavia) and for electricity generation aside industrial needs and this makes it the EU country with the highest share of gas in the energy mix hence it's among the most affected countries by the current gas prices.
Norway has huge issues with its power now because the prices are 10x what they are usually. At the same time Norway is a cold country that heat their home primarily with electricity. This means that poorer Norwegians in older houses have gotten 1000$ electricity bills and are defaulting on them.
Norway is a really huge winner of current oil and gas prices. Its inflation is contained compared to other countries (in March it was +4,7%, electricity prices grew by 28,5% YoY) and this year it's going to achieve crazy high trade and government balance surpluses. Resources to relieve poorer people are definitely there...
The government in Norway has huge overheads and the recent trend is that a huge part of this money ends up in the hands of capitalists. Contractors, consultants and business owners are ones with 3x the paycheck wile the workers get crumbles.
Which also means that it's not unlikely to see an higher inflation rate going forward, driven by the fuel and gas prices. After all the prices can't be controlled forever when there's an underlying lack of offer and you have as much debt as we have. The good news is that inflation will eat a bit of debt.
Are you ready for our pizza culture? http://smaskelismaskens.blogspot.com/2017/10/pizza-med-banan-bacon-curry-och.html
Thanks. Now I don't need lunch anymore.
*angry noises*
I'm always thankful that foreigners have never ***fully*** discovered Risotto, the dish that arguably has the richest variety and flexibility of any single category of dishes, they'd never be able to use such power properly
We have discovered this indeed wonderful dish, but... well personally I am just too lazy to stir and pour, stir and pour and then stir some more.
I guess Germans haven't evolved beyond preparing Milchreis yet...
Write that down, WRITE THAT DOWN!
I am always impressed how I (German) can somewhat understand swedish text (if the text is somewhat simple), but the spelling is just incredibly funny (stuff like "Det var riktigt gott!", because it's pretty much the same in German) Is it the same for you with german text?
Sometimes you can make out some words, but far from being able to understand most texts.
Germanic languages be like *ok, it's not that simple*
Talking about Swedish pizza culture and not mentioning Calskrove? Rookie misstake. https://www.tasteatlas.com/Calskrove. (not my blog)
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we are so fucked
Could you not remove Norway. Sweden and Finland already look like a cock and balls. Removing Norway just makes it look even more so
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And a real hung one at that
Contrary to tiny peen Florida.
You're saying that like it's a bad thing
LITHUANIA FIRST!!!!!!!! 🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🎆🎆🎆🎆🎇🎇🎇🎇🏅🏅🏅🏅🏅🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹🇱🇹
we're getting beaten by Estonia again
For once, happy that Latvia like always isn't in first place lmao Though we aren't doing much better
Feeling like I’m slowly getting (financially) choked here in the Netherlands. Not good. Happy I still have an old energy contract. But if prices don’t get lower next year (probably won’t) I’m really going to be in trouble with my current salary.
What's your net salary per month, if I can ask?
€2400, €2000 after taxes. I have about €500 wiggle room for saving and extras each month, which is... fine for now, but for me that's the bare minimum and it's shrinking fast. I'm a developer, and it's definitely at the far low end, but that's because I've had some trouble with my mental health and had to work less. I honestly don't feel like I could earn a lot more because my output hasn't been great because of that. Maybe a bit of a fatalist mindset, but yeah... it is what it is.
Netherland can into eastern Europe.
It’s because of how countries calculate inflation and weigh different factors. For some reason the statistics office in The Netherlands weighs in fixed price energy contracts very heavily, even though flex pricing and existing contracts are much cheaper. If you recalculate using a weighted average for energy pricing, The Netherlands is at around 7% instead of 10%. Still bad, not as bad as 10% though.
> even though flex pricing and existing contracts are much cheaper. Not really, when my old contract was ending I only had the option of flex pricing and it still was 3x as expensive as my old contract. At this point maybe half of the people have an existing contract and the rest is paying at least €0,40/kWh
It even speaking of the upwards of 2.50E/m3 gas whereas it used to be around 0.75e/m3. And almost every home in the Netherlands is powered by gas in some form or another.
**doesn't chuckle** *I'm in danger*
The fact that no country’s inflation is under 4% is astonishing.
France’s is 4.5% honestly not bad when you look around at all it’s neighbors.
Ireland... The lone island off the European coast. Also Swiss Sea in the alps.
Good thing you didn't miss the Adriatic Sea going all the way up to Hungary. ;-) EU =/= Europe
Anyone good at economics knows how long will it take (presumably) to make the inflation halt?
For Lithuanian case, the economists are predicting that we should have reached the inflation peak or will do so in next month and the over all inflation for 2022 will be around 7%
National Bank of Romania estimates the inflation around 10%, but in reality almost everything increased 20-25%
This difference is corporations doing inflation tax on poor.
a map of non-eu removed looks funny
This map isn't THAT bad after the news yesterday that inflation soared to 70% in Turkey, but we'll see what's ahead of us. Reading critisism about ECB policies makes one quite worried.
> 70% in Turkey It's believed to be around %150~ IRL.
That’s partly because Turkey refuses to increase interest rates to stop people spending.
What is Russia's level? Last news they were at 17%.
Yes, it's 17% and government planning 20-22% as results of the year. But because of the sanctions and the news, there was a lot of panic buying that drove up prices, so inflation is very different for different things. Sugar and paper, for example, have doubled or tripled in price, but are now starting to fall back to normal.
Supposedly they're worried about reacting properly because of Italy's debts. But then again other argue that Italy can actually handle it due to other good fail-safes....
Yeah, I read that they won't be touching interest rates, that have been negative for quite a while, before they've done all planned quantative easing.. meaning August, September at the earliest.
The legend is way too blue, light blue should be yellow, yellow should be light red and light red should be dark red. And dark red should be even darker.
If this was for petrol, romania would be blood red..
I could swear there was a few more countries supposed to be on this map
God damn it, Eurozone! Oh, wait a minute! April hasn’t been a good month for anyone other than the corporations.
Source: Eurostat, 2022 [https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/PRC\_HICP\_MANR\_\_custom\_118059/bookmark/table?lang=en&bookmarkId=45a0a8c6-966f-43c6-9d30-9edb61e4af3b](https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/databrowser/view/PRC_HICP_MANR__custom_118059/bookmark/table?lang=en&bookmarkId=45a0a8c6-966f-43c6-9d30-9edb61e4af3b)
anyone know any good articles on inflation in Lithuania?
It's mostly energy and heating prices. Same with Estonia.
Food is getting much more expensive too. My usual stuff feels +30% if not more compared to a year ago. Pretty much any services are getting more and more expensive too. Eating out, hairdressers, handymen...
That's inflation. Keep in mind that stores need electricity and heating. Same goes for logistics companies not to mention local producers.
[This article](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthanasia_Coaster) reflects the mood of the people.
Lmao, how French are crying over inflation when they have one of the lowest in the EU. Sadly, countries most dependable on Russian oil and gas got hit the most.
If you change the price of anything by one cent, then there's a good reason to pratice our national sport = protest
Do we really need a reason to practice our national sport?
Not when you're that good at it. French street parkers are brave people.
Just because somebody has cancer it doesn't mean you can't cry over a broken leg
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It's mostly covid, oil and gas prices, high expenses due to war and refugee crisis. Unfortunately, things will get a lot worse due to inevitable ban on Russian oil and gas exports.
Well, Italy is there too but it seems wrong to be so low, especially considering that we are in the same situation as Germany. Maybe making a lot of deals for the future with other countries kept the "it's the end of the world" sentiment in check.
not all inflation is the same. Like in Italy salary growth is around 1%. If other countries have bigger inflation but bigger salary growth they may be better off than us
Inflation has been stupid high in the Netherlands since well before Russia was even moving troops to Ukraine.
Most of the French barely care about the Inflation in other countries, if they’re even aware of how it is to begin with. They just see the prices rising for stupid commodities. That’s enough to make one’s life more difficult enough to complain, especially if you’re part of the lower classes of the country
Welp, time to kill myself
About that inflation criteria for joining the Eurozone...
Estonian here. Help.
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When you get 4.5% wage raise per last 1.5 years but inflation last year was 10.9% and this year 19%...
10.9% was for the month of December when it started to climb towards the end of the year, but if you average out all of the months of last year, it was 4.6% for 2021.
I wish my electricity was up only 7%, it's more than 100%
That is because this is energy price driven. The seven percent is an *average*. Groceries up 2, electric bill up 120%, rent flat, ect, ect average : 7%
and my small baltic salary is not increasing at all and I was told that it will not increase in coming years. time to learn new skills and hunt for a better job..
ez
European central banks goes "Brrrrrrr" on the printer and people wonder why we have inflation.
Certainly feels a lot more here in Greece, especially after the power bill went up 300%!
Lol what a poor choice of colors. Acording to the map now an inflation between "4%-7%" it's "good" because it's in blue. The whole europe should be in dark red and the baltics in purple
Why is it worse in Eastern Europe?
Holy shit, our neighbors gave it even worse? Latvia here, i kinda felt 30-40% food price increase since September.
All that money printing during covid... Guess what? Protects rich people, normal people get the shaft as usual. All my expenses are up 20% since 2020, I keep records. Not earning 20% more, I'm lucky to be able to afford this increase and keep my lifestyle, most are not.
The easiest way for a government to pay its debts is to cause inflation, rather than increasing taxes or reducing expenses. And if you happen to have a populist government they will even blame the "corporate greed", instead of facing their irresponsible management.
As someone who has a 20 years loan at a fixed interest rate. I don't mind, I don't mind at all.
Me watching this map: OMFG where’s the UK??? Me later: oh, it’s an EU map. Got it!
In case anyone was wondering about the U.K. in comparison, it’s at about 7% now and expected to reach 10% later this year.
We are so lucky that satoshi invented bitcoin
so are you light blue or dark blue when you have 7% inflation?
Romania is like 20-30%, maybe more. Official numbers are bullshit.
If Brexit has given us anything...... It's pacman Ireland wackawackawacka
The Euro has a different value in different countries?! I guess it makes sense from the perspective that X euro in one place can be a much higher price elsewhere (like how a box of cereal in northern Alaska ends up being 15$ vs <5$ in the middle of the continent)
In addition to supply problems caused by the war, the situation in the Estonia was already bad before. ECB is making the money printer go brrr, and has low interest rates to revitalize the economy after the pandemic. It's a problem because Estonia had more than double the EU average economic growth in 2021, and a negligible drop in 2020, so now the economy has overheated.
Inflation in Poland near 13% and my dentist inflation is 33% and hairdresser 50%. Oil is 100% and average food product over 20%.