The twelve institutions hiring individual care workers, nursing assistants and social workers most actively right now pay their staff very unevenly: whole-staff median pay among them ranges from €901 to €2,268 gross. The spread reaches two and a half times, even though they are hiring for the same professions.
The highest median belongs to a care home, which on this measure outpays even a university hospital.
What the institutions hiring right now pay
Employers earned their place in the table by listing volume: it shows the twelve institutions with the most listings for these three professions — active or posted within the past six months, 87 in all. More institutions cleared the comparison threshold; shown are the ones hiring most actively. The median is Sodra's May figure for each institution's entire staff, across every position.
| Institution | Listings | Median (gross) | Employees | Change since February |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Socialinė sinergija | 19 | €1,447 | 328 | +12.3% |
| Nacionalinis socialinės integracijos institutas | 11 | €1,350 | 671 | +5.4% |
| ANTAVILIŲ PENSIONATAS | 9 | €2,268 | 161 | +6.1% |
| Kauno globa | 9 | €1,564 | 176 | +2.3% |
| Nuoširdus rūpestis | 8 | €978* | 181 | +2.1% |
| Benevita | 5 | €901* | 60 | — |
| Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universiteto Kauno ligoninė | 5 | €2,210 | 3,214 | +3.2% |
| Senjorų dvaras | 5 | €1,723 | 52 | +4.4% |
| Dotnuvos slaugos namai | 4 | €1,851 | 37 | +4.8% |
| INTEGRUOTŲ SVEIKATOS PASLAUGŲ CENTRAS | 4 | €1,409 | 77 | +19.1% |
| Pasvalio socialinių paslaugų centras | 4 | €2,026 | 175 | +10.2% |
| Sidabrinė pieva | 4 | €1,440 | 56 | +22.3% |
Two medians carry an asterisk: the figures for Nuoširdus rūpestis and Benevita sit below the full-time minimum monthly wage. Jumping to conclusions here would mislead. Sodra's median counts everyone who worked at the institution for the full calendar month, but it is blind to contract size: someone on half-time enters the calculation with half a salary. Part-time schedules are common in care and social services, so a median below the full-time minimum mostly reflects staffing structure — how much of the workforce is on partial hours — not the hourly rate. The same arithmetic applies to the whole table: the more part-time positions an institution has, the lower its figure settles.
A care home versus a university hospital
The table's largest employer is Lietuvos sveikatos mokslų universiteto Kauno ligoninė: 3,214 staff and a median of €2,210. The hospital's figure is shaped by every position it employs, from support staff to specialist physicians — the market's best-paid group — so it says the least about care work of any row in the table. The €2,268 at Antavilių pensionatas is a differently built number: in a care home, nursing and care roles form the core of the workforce, so the whole-staff median tracks this work far more closely. That is exactly why the care home beating the university hospital on whole-staff median — by €58 — is the most telling row in the table for a care worker. What the sector's largest employers pay is covered in a separate comparison.
Medians are rising, four of them in leaps
The healthcare sector's weighted median grew 2.0% from February to May. The institutions in the table are not lagging behind that pace: all eleven with February data raised their medians over the quarter, four of them at double-digit rates. Sidabrinė pieva's figure jumped 22.3%, Integruotų sveikatos paslaugų centras 19.1%, Socialinė sinergija 12.3%, Pasvalio socialinių paslaugų centras 10.2%. All four are small or mid-sized institutions; the table's largest employer, the university hospital, grew 3.2% over the same period.
Double-digit jumps demand a caution flag. With 56 or 77 people on staff, a median moves noticeably on just a few hires or departures, so one quarter's change does not yet make a trend. Benevita sits out this comparison — there is no February data for it. Still, the direction is familiar: in the advertised-pay geography overview, employers in smaller cities offered care specialists the most, and now the fastest actual-pay growth comes from small care institutions.
What the listings offer
The table itself says nothing about advertised pay: its medians show what institutions actually pay their entire staff. The listing figures are a different kind of number and cannot be compared with the table directly. The median advertised salary for an individual care worker currently stands at €1,440 (37 active listings); for a nursing assistant, €1,438 (21 listings).
A two-euro difference.
The listings market prices these two differently named roles practically identically, so the job title matters little when choosing — what matters more is the employer behind it. For a social worker, a role that requires a university degree, the advertised median is €1,880 (14 listings): €440 more than for an individual care worker. A fuller city-by-city picture is on the individual care worker salary page, and current listings can be browsed in the job search.
Practical advice for anyone job-hunting here: check two numbers — what the listing promises and what the institution actually pays its whole staff. The second often says more about a future workplace, and among employers hiring for the same professions it varies by two and a half times. Whether the small institutions' double-digit jumps become a trend will show in the next Sodra data update.