Bulgarians work, still poor—top EU poverty risk

Nearly 12 percent of working Bulgarians lived below the poverty threshold during 2024 despite holding jobs, placing the Balkan nation among European Union members with the highest rates of employed poor. Data released by the European statistics agency showed 11.8 percent of Bulgarian workers aged 18 and older earned insufficient income to lift their households above the risk line, well beyond the bloc’s 8.2 percent average. Only Luxembourg registered a worse figure at 13.4 percent, while Spain and Greece also exceeded 10 percent.

The poverty measure captures employees and self-employed individuals whose household resources fall short of 60 percent of their country’s median disposable income. Bulgarian men faced a higher risk at 13 percent compared with 10.4 percent for women, creating a 2.6 percentage point difference similar to patterns across the union. Finland recorded the lowest share of working poor at 2.8 percent, followed by the Czech Republic at 3.6 percent and Belgium at 4.3 percent. The statistics demonstrate that employment alone fails to guarantee economic security for substantial portions of the workforce in several member states.