In May, the highest median pay among Lithuania's ten largest healthcare employers came not from the university centres in Vilnius or Kaunas but from Klaipėdos universiteto ligoninė: €3,282 gross. The median at Vilniaus universiteto ligoninė Santaros klinikos was €3,148, at Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universiteto ligoninė Kauno klinikos €3,014. These are actual salaries declared to Sodra, covering everyone an employer has on staff — from support workers to specialist physicians.
Together, the sector's ten largest employers have over 36,000 staff — about half of the total workforce across the 213 healthcare companies and institutions in the comparison.
| Employer | Median (gross) | Employees | Change since February |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universiteto ligoninė Kauno klinikos | €3,014 | 8,039 | +4.3% |
| Vilniaus universiteto ligoninė Santaros klinikos | €3,148 | 7,158 | +4.4% |
| InMedica | €2,206 | 3,748 | +8.0% |
| Klaipėdos universiteto ligoninė | €3,282 | 3,360 | +1.6% |
| Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universiteto Kauno ligoninė | €2,210 | 3,214 | +3.2% |
| Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universitetas | €1,924 | 2,699 | +1.5% |
| Respublikinė Šiaulių ligoninė | €2,576 | 2,310 | +2.9% |
| Respublikinė Panevėžio ligoninė | €2,407 | 2,107 | +0.8% |
| Respublikinė Vilniaus universitetinė ligoninė | €2,844 | 2,101 | +2.0% |
| NEMUNO VAISTINĖ | €2,851 | 1,530 | +1.5% |
The sector's weighted median stood at €2,321 in May. Seven of the ten employers pay more; below it sit InMedica, Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universiteto Kauno ligoninė and the university itself. A median reads simply: half of an employer's staff earn less than the figure, half earn more.
The regions outpace the capital, for the third time
Klaipėda's edge is no one-quarter accident. Two earlier cuts pointed the same way: in the care-role listings overview, employers in smaller cities offered specialists the most, and in the psychologist market comparison Klaipėda outbid Vilnius. Actual pay now confirms the same pattern — a third independent source. Listing medians showed intentions; Sodra data shows payments already made. The likely explanation is structural: the pool of candidates around a port-city institution is smaller than around the capital, so to attract a specialist the whole country is competing for, it has to offer more.
The lead is fragile, though. The Kauno klinikos median grew 4.3% since February, Santaros klinikos 4.4%, Klaipėdos universiteto ligoninė 1.6% — one of the slowest rates in the ten. If the big centres keep raising pay nearly three times faster, first place is not guaranteed for the port city.
Workforce composition drives the differences
The two lowest clinical medians in the table belong to the InMedica network (€2,206) and Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universiteto Kauno ligoninė (€2,210). Comparing them directly with Santaros or Kauno klinikos would mislead: in a primary-care network, most of the team are family doctors, nurses and reception staff, while a tertiary university hospital concentrates narrowly specialised physicians, the market's best-paid group. The gap between the medians is first of all this composition, reflecting different functions within the health system. The table is no generosity ranking. Nor can an employer's median tell you what, say, a nurse earns at a given institution: it is a cut across every position.
The sixth row is not a hospital at all. Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universitetas makes the ten as an employer of 2,699 people, but its €1,924 median covers lecturers, researchers and administrators, so it should stay out of hospital-to-hospital comparisons.
The most unexpected row in the ten is NEMUNO VAISTINĖ: the pharmacy chain's median of €2,851 exceeds the figures of all three republican hospitals. Composition matters here too: the chain's core workforce is pharmacists.
All ten are rising, at very different speeds
All ten employer medians are up since February. Not one exception. The sector grew 2.0% over the same period; five employers raised pay faster than that, Respublikinė Vilniaus universitetinė ligoninė matches the sector exactly, and four grew more slowly. The sharpest jump is InMedica's: 8.0% in a quarter. The two largest university centres, employing over 15,000 people between them, raised their medians at more than double the sector's pace, which suggests competition for staff among the biggest employers is tightening.
The next Sodra data release will show whether InMedica's pace holds and whether Klaipėda withstands the pressure from the giants. What individual professions are currently offered in job listings is on the salary pages, for instance the general practice nurse page. Those measure offers; this measures pay already made.