Bulgaria's numbers, explained

What inflation is, and why yours is different

Official inflation is one number for the whole country: how much dearer things are today than a year ago. NSI collects the prices every month and builds Bulgaria's index from them; the one common European method, and the check that it was followed, are Eurostat's, and Eurostat publishes the result. Vyarno takes it verbatim and never recomputes it, so it cannot drift from what is published.

This figure is ours rather than the publisher's below it. It is worked out from their published data. check  How, and why →

Both figures above come from Eurostat and both are equally official. They are not the same thing: the first is inflation for the whole country exactly as Eurostat publishes it, and the second is our own sum of the 13 groups, each multiplied by the share of the money that goes to it. This time the two are for different months. Eurostat publishes the overall rate about two weeks before the group breakdown, and we show each figure with its own month rather than hold the newer one back. The overall figure is for September 2026, the per-group figures for August 2026. One difference is still left, and it comes from the arithmetic. Every January Eurostat refreshes the basket, because people spend a little differently than the year before. The figure for the last twelve months runs through that changeover and catches both baskets - the old one and the new; our sum uses only today's. That is why the two come out slightly apart.

Your own inflation is that same sum with your shares in it. If food is a third of your money where the national basket puts a fifth, food's price rise weighs more for you.

The basket: 13 groups, their weights, and how far each has risen

Prices are grouped by a European classification (ECOICOP), which for Bulgaria gives thirteen groups. A group's share is how much of everything the country's households spend goes to it; Eurostat publishes it once a year. Older Bulgarian tables show twelve groups because the last one was a catch-all: CP12 is now insurance and financial services and a new CP13 covers personal care and social protection. That is why the two do not line up.

Eurostat · August 2026

From gross to net: what tax and contributions take

Employee social contributions come out of the gross first, and income tax is charged on what is left. The rates are in statute and change with it rather than with the market.

The tax is the same for everyone, but contributions are only paid up to a certain salary. Below that line the same share comes out of any raise. Above it contributions stop, so only the tax comes out of a raise, and the higher the pay, the smaller the share of it the state takes. Both the curve below and the table under it are worked out from the rates and the line above. No agency publishes them: nobody is obliged to put them together.

the State Gazette · issue 68 of 28 Jul 2026

What a worker costs

On top of the gross, the employer pays its own share of the same five funds, 18.52% on the same insurable income, under the same ceiling, plus a work-accident contribution of 0.4% to 1.1% depending on the activity. Under the ceiling 34.7% of the whole cost of employment never reaches the worker, and above it the share falls: contributions stop, the salary does not.

source: State Gazette · ЗБДОО 2026, Приложение № 2А към чл. 14, т. 2 · issue 68 of 28 Jul 2026

Where a salary sits in the country

The spread: Eurostat · 2022. Today's average: NSI wages · Q2 2026 (preliminary).

This figure is ours rather than the publisher's below it. It is worked out from their published data. How, and why →

The survey gives three figures for Bulgaria: what the lowest-paid 10% earn, what the person exactly in the middle earns, and what the highest-paid 10% earn. So the figure shows roughly where a salary sits, not exactly: nobody polled every worker in the country this month.

The survey is from 2022, and the minimum wage has risen faster than the average since. So the bottom rungs, set against today's average, come out below the minimum, and below it is not a lawful wage for a full-time employee. Those rungs show the minimum wage itself, and the table marks them as that: it is neither measured by Eurostat nor worked out between two of their figures.

This needs two official numbers, because neither is enough on its own. The first says how far apart wages are: how much more someone near the top earns than someone near the bottom. It comes from Eurostat's earnings survey, counts one person and one wage at a time, but is published once every four years, so its amounts are out of date. The second is today's average wage for the country, which NSI publishes every quarter. We take the spread from the first and set it against today's average from the second, so the rungs carry today's amounts. Both figures are the whole country's: nobody publishes how wages are spread inside one oblast, so this ladder does not change with the oblast.

The home loan

This is the average across the agreements signed last month, and it is what the monthly payment is computed from. Three different numbers go by "the mortgage rate" though, the APRC is the second of them, and БНБ place three limits on every new loan besides. All of that is on the borrowing page.

The €/m² in the listings

No institution publishes the price of a square metre in Bulgaria. Eurostat says only how much it has changed, not what it costs. So the price itself comes from listings: imot.bg publishes an average €/m² per district, for each city it covers. Sofia is the one shown here, because this page is the country's and asks the reader nothing; the calculator shows whichever city they picked. These are asking prices rather than prices from closed sales, and the cheapest district and the dearest are several times apart.

This figure is ours rather than the publisher's below it. It is worked out from their published data. How, and why →

imot.bg publishes one figure per district and none for Sofia as a whole. The median across 143 districts, and the comparison with 2000, are our arithmetic over their figures, which is why they are named here rather than attributed to them. The figures from closed sales are on the market page, because they come from Eurostat and НСИ and measure something else.

Work and pay

Unemployment is seasonally adjusted: the month-to-month swings from farming, tourism and construction are taken out so the direction shows rather than the season. The wages below are NSI's own quarterly figures for the country, exactly as published: a cell is selected, never averaged.

The peak is 20.1% in May 2001. The lowest Eurostat have recorded for Bulgaria over this window is 3.0% in January 2026.

These are not the people registered at the labour offices. They are the ones the labour force survey counts: out of work in the reference week, actively looking over the past four weeks, and available to start within two. Somebody who has given up looking counts as neither unemployed nor in the labour force, and one paid hour in the week counts as employed.

NSI wages · Q2 2026 (preliminary)