Lithuania's healthcare sector pays more than its job listings suggest. According to Sodra data, the sector's median wage in May was €2,321 gross, measured across 213 companies and institutions employing more than 71,000 people — from assistants to physicians and managers. Since February, when the median stood at €2,275, it has grown by two per cent, or €46. The median here is the middle value: half of the sector's employees work at institutions with a higher figure, half at ones with a lower.
That is pay actually received, not a promise in a listing. What the sector's ten largest employers actually pay is a separate comparison.
The listings promise less
Job listings — from care institutions' own career pages to the Employment Service (Užimtumo tarnyba) — paint a more modest picture. For care staff (mostly individual care workers, nurses and nursing assistants, along with social workers, physiotherapists and other professionals in the field), the median advertised salary ranges from €1,546 in Kaunas to €1,875 in Šilutė. Even in the most generous cities, the advertised median sits several hundred euros below the sector's actual median. More than thirty other towns — from Tauragė to Druskininkai — did not make the comparison this time: each has fewer than three active listings with a stated salary.
The gap has a simple explanation. Two, in fact. A listing usually states the opening offer to a new hire — before supplements for night or shift work and before seniority — so actual earnings once in the job often turn out higher. The advertised sum is a starting point for negotiation, not the final answer. And the sector median covers every role, physicians included, whose salaries do not show up in care listings. Role-by-role breakdowns are available on the salary pages — the general practice nurse page, for instance.
Šilutė and Palanga outpace the capital
The most unexpected news this quarter is the geography. At the top of the advertised-pay list sit not Vilnius but Šilutė, with a median of €1,875, and Palanga at €1,872. The difference between them: three euros. The capital-city premium, usual in most professions, is nowhere to be seen in care listings: Vilnius and Šiauliai share third place at €1,798 apiece; Klaipėda offers €1,649, Alytus €1,577, Panevėžys €1,562. Klaipėda, the country's third-largest city, sits mid-table, €149 below Šiauliai. Of the two leaders, Palanga is the less surprising — its sanatoriums and rehabilitation clinics recruit care staff all year round. Šilutė has no such resort hinterland, and still offers the most.
At the bottom sits Kaunas, with a median of €1,546. The city that hosts the Lithuanian University of Health Sciences and trains a large share of the country's care workforce advertises €329 less than Šilutė. That is not employer stinginess but a consequence of supply: yearly graduate cohorts let Kaunas institutions fill vacancies for less, while smaller-town hospitals, sanatoriums and care homes have no such luxury — to attract a specialist the big cities are also courting, they must bid higher. Kaunas shares the bottom band with Alytus and Panevėžys — the medians of all three fit inside a €31 range. The health sector's collective agreement adds to the effect: with base pay similar across the country, a coastal rehabilitation clinic needs only a modest supplement to overtake the capital. The whole eight-city spread fits inside €329 — here, geography levels pay rather than dividing it.
The small-city medians rest on thin evidence: Šilutė and Palanga each have just five active listings, against nineteen apiece in Vilnius and Kaunas. A single new employer's offer could move such a figure noticeably, so Šilutė's lead is better read as a tendency than a title. Counting recently expired listings as well, Palanga's median rests on a considerably broader base than Šilutė's, which makes it the more reliable of the two leaders. Šiauliai, with nine active listings, sits in between: enough for the median to deserve attention, too few to treat it as final.
What does this mean for someone choosing where to work? In today's listings Šilutė promises €329 more than Kaunas — per month, not per year. Šiauliai offers exactly as much as Vilnius, without capital-city living costs, and current care-sector listings can be compared directly. Whether the sector's actual pay keeps up its two-per-cent pace will become clear with the next Sodra data update, and the city medians will be recalculated as soon as next quarter.