How public sector salaries work in 2026: the coefficient rule in Legea 153/2017, the freeze at the December 2025 level, and why online calculators contradict each other.
Translated from Romanian. This article covers Romanian labour and tax law; the Romanian version is canonical and is updated first.
If you have ever searched for “teacher salary 2026” or “police officer salary 2026”, you will have found figures that do not match each other — sometimes substantial differences for exactly the same position. That is not necessarily the sources’ fault: in 2026 three different things overlap, and most articles mix them up.
This guide explains the mechanism; it does not promise you a single figure. The reason is simple: for most public sector positions, the correct figure cannot be derived from a published formula — it has to be read off the payroll.
Legea-cadru 153/2017 (the framework law on the pay of staff funded from public funds) sets out how public sector pay is determined. From 2023, the mechanism is as follows: base salary = the coefficient from the relevant annex × the guaranteed national minimum gross base salary.
The coefficients are grouped into annexes by field — public administration, health, education, public order and defence, justice and so on. Each position has a coefficient that rises with the level of education, the professional or teaching grade and the pay step/grade.
So far, the formula looks as if it allows a simple calculation. This is where the problem starts.
For the second consecutive year, public sector salaries are held at the level granted for December 2025. The measure was adopted through the year-end ordinance (publicly known as the “ordonanța trenuleț”, the omnibus ordinance) and applies for as long as the person holds the same position, under the same conditions.
The practical consequence is counter-intuitive, and it explains most of the confusion:
The national gross minimum wage went up in 2026 (including from 1 July), but public sector salaries did not go up with it, because the “coefficient × minimum wage” mechanism is suspended by the freeze.
In other words, if you multiply the coefficient from the annex by the minimum wage in force today, you get a figure that is higher than the actual salary. That multiplication is exactly what many online calculators do — hence the inflated results.
The freeze does not cover only the base salary. The following are also held at the level set for December 2025:
In addition, the payments and allowances granted on retirement, on withdrawal from service, on termination of employment or on transfer to the reserve are not granted in 2026. Special and military pensions are not indexed to the inflation rate during the year.
These are details that matter a great deal to someone close to retirement, but they are missing from articles that stop at “how much does a teacher earn”.
Increments corresponding to the length-of-service bands are applied on top of the base salary. They remain one of the few components that can change a salary over time without a change in the law: when someone moves into a higher seniority band, their pay grading changes.
Watch out for one reading trap, though: the increment percentages discussed publicly in the summer of 2026 belong to the draft of the new pay law, not to the rules in force. We deal with them separately below, precisely so that they are not confused with the current position.
In 2026 a draft law was put out for consultation that would completely restructure public sector pay. The elements discussed publicly include a new reference value, a revised grid of coefficients, a set of seniority increments with differentiated percentages, and the removal of some current entitlements (among them the food allowance and the bonus for harmful working conditions).
Two points are essential here:
The figures in the draft are generally higher than the current ones. That explains why some of the results you find online look optimistic: they are correct as a projection, but they do not describe this year’s payslip.
To sum up, a figure found online for a public sector position in 2026 can come from three different places:
| Source of the figure | What it describes | Is it the 2026 salary? |
|---|---|---|
| Coefficient × the current minimum wage | The formula in Legea 153/2017, without the freeze | No — it overestimates |
| The December 2025 level | The salary actually paid, under the freeze | Yes |
| The grid in the draft of the new law | A legislative proposal | No — not yet in force |
None of the three is “false” in itself. The difference lies in what each one describes — and that is usually what the headline leaves out.
For a figure you can rely on, the correct order is:
An online calculator can be useful as an order of magnitude, but it cannot know what conditions you work in, which bonuses apply to you, or how you were graded at the moment of the freeze.
The rules above do not apply to the private sector. There, pay starts from negotiation and from the individual employment contract, and CAS (the pension contribution) at 25%, CASS (the health contribution) at 10% and 10% income tax are withheld from the gross, with the personal deduction where it applies. To estimate net pay in the private sector you can use the net salary calculator, which takes into account the personal deduction, the relief for young people under 26 and the applicable exemptions.
Informational article, accurate at the date of publication. Not legal or tax advice. Public sector pay changes frequently through annual ordinances and laws, and the draft of the new pay law was still under debate at the time of writing — always check the act in force at source (the Official Gazette, the Ministry of Labour) or with the HR department of your institution.
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