How the work-time-per-litre chart is calculated

The chart “minutes of work to pay for one litre” sets the pump prices of the EU Weekly Oil Bulletin against what an average full-time worker takes home per hour in each EU country. It has three panels: (A) minutes of work for one litre, or the time for a 50-litre tank; (B) the price in euro and in purchasing power standards (PPS); (C) price against net hourly earnings, with a fitted line. This page gives the sources, the formulas, a worked example, the statistics and the limitations.

Sources

• Pump prices: European Commission, EU Weekly Oil Bulletin — national average prices including all taxes, Euro-super 95 and automotive diesel, in € per litre (prices in other currencies converted into euro by the Commission). The EU reference is the Commission’s EU average, weighted by consumption. Reused under CC BY 4.0.
• Eurostat earn_nt_net — Annual net earnings: single person without children earning 100% of the average earning (P1_NCH_AW100), net earning (NET), EUR and national currency. Last updated by Eurostat 2026-10-01; accessed 2026-10-01.
• Eurostat lfsa_ewhun2 — Average usual weekly hours worked in the main job: employees (SAL), full-time (FT), all NACE activities (TOTAL), 15–64 years, total. Last updated by Eurostat 2026-09-10; accessed 2026-10-01.
• Eurostat prc_ppp_ind_1 — Purchasing power parities, price level indices (COICOP 2018): household final consumption expenditure (E011), PPP and PLI, EU27_2020 = 1 / 100. Last updated by Eurostat 2026-07-09; accessed 2026-10-01.
• Exchange rates (latest bulletin only, for CZ, DK, HU, PL, RO and SE): the ECB euro foreign exchange reference rate of the bulletin date.

Why these series. Net, not gross: fuel is paid from take-home pay; gross wages would hide tax and social contributions, which differ a lot between countries. The average full-time worker, single and without children (earn_nt_net, case P1_NCH_AW100) is the one case that Eurostat publishes for all 27 countries on the same definition (gross earnings of the average worker, minus income tax and employee social contributions, plus family benefits — none here). It is a model worker, not the median: in countries with very unequal pay, a typical worker earns less and works longer for a litre. Hours: usual weekly hours of full-time employees in the main job (EU Labour Force Survey), the same population as the earnings case. Purchasing power: the parities of household final consumption expenditure (E011) — the basket households actually buy from, and the same parities Eurostat uses to express net earnings in PPS.

Formulas

For CZ, DK, HU, PL, RO and SE the latest bulletin is computed in national currency: the net earnings published in national currency are converted to euro at the ECB rate of the bulletin date — the date of the prices. Exchange-rate movements between the earnings year and today therefore cancel out of the minutes. Prices are rounded to 0.001 € before the calculation, as everywhere on fuel-prices.eu. A past year uses the average of that year’s weekly bulletins (at least 40 weeks) and Eurostat’s earnings of the same year in euro.

Worked example: Romania and Austria, petrol, bulletin of 19 Oct 2026

Purchasing power standards (PPS)

A PPS is Eurostat’s artificial currency unit in which one unit buys the same basket of goods and services in every country. Dividing a price in national currency by the purchasing power parity turns it into PPS: a litre that costs the same in euro is “dearer” in PPS where everything else is cheaper. Panel B therefore shows how expensive fuel is relative to the general price level of each country, while panel A shows how expensive it is relative to wages. The two answer different questions and need not agree: price levels and wages are related but not the same thing. For the EU-27 as a whole, 1 PPS = 1 € by construction, so the EU average price is the same in both units.

Statistics on the chart

• Linear fit (panel C): ordinary least squares of the pump price on net hourly earnings across the countries shown (the EU average is drawn but not used in the fit). The chart prints the intercept, the slope, R² and n. The data files add the slope’s standard error and 95% confidence interval (t distribution, n − 2 degrees of freedom) and Pearson’s r. For petrol on the latest bulletin: price = 1.665 + 0.0193 × hourly earnings, 95% CI of the slope 0.0012 to 0.0375, R² = 0.16, n = 27; for diesel R² = 0.24. A low R² means that wages explain little of the differences in pump prices — which is why the work time per litre varies so much more than the price.
• Lines of equal effort (panel C): a straight line through the origin, price = (m ÷ 60) × hourly earnings, joins all combinations that cost m minutes of work per litre. A country above a line needs more than m minutes.
• Coefficient of variation: sample standard deviation (n − 1) ÷ mean, across the countries shown, for the price and for the minutes per litre. Petrol, latest bulletin: 14.0% for the price, 35.9% for the minutes.
• Spearman’s ρ between the rank of the price in euro and the rank of the minutes per litre (average ranks for ties). A value near zero or below means that the countries with the dearest fuel in euro are not those where fuel costs the most work. Petrol, latest bulletin: ρ = -0.10.

Years and the break in 2024

“Latest bulletin” sets this week’s prices against the most recent year for which Eurostat publishes earnings, hours and parities for all 27 countries (2025). A past year sets the average prices of that year against the earnings, hours and parities of the same year. Years available in the chart generator: 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2025. Countries without data for a year (for example Croatia before 2013, Cyprus in some years) are listed under the chart and left out — never shown as zero.

2024 is not used. Eurostat’s net earnings are computed with the OECD tax-benefit model up to 2023 and with the JRC’s EUROMOD from 2024 (flagged “b”, break in series). The values published for 2024 are about one twelfth of the 2023 and 2025 annual amounts in every country, so they cannot be read as annual earnings. Earnings up to 2023 and from 2025 come from different models and are not strictly comparable over time: compare countries within a year, and treat changes between 2023 and 2025 with care.

Limitations

• Earnings lag: the latest bulletin is set against the earnings of 2025. Wages have grown since — fastest in central and eastern Europe — so the current minutes are somewhat overstated there. No forecast or adjustment is applied: every number comes from a published source.
• One model worker: an average full-time employee, single and without children. Part-time workers, the self-employed, pensioners, couples with children and median earners are not covered; family benefits and second earners change take-home pay.
• Paid time, not time at work: annual earnings include paid holidays and public holidays, and so do the paid hours (usual weekly hours × 52.18). The result is minutes of paid working time; minutes actually at work are roughly 10–15% fewer, by different amounts in each country.
• National averages: pump prices and wages differ within countries (cities and regions, motorway stations); one national figure hides that.
• Taxes included: pump prices include excise duties and VAT, which explain much of the difference in euro. The chart measures what drivers pay, not the cost of the fuel itself.
• Parities are annual: the PPS on the latest bulletin uses the parities of 2025; price levels move a little within a year, faster in countries with high inflation.
• Revisions: the Commission sometimes revises a bulletin after publication by a fraction of a cent; the chart follows our copy of the bulletin. Eurostat revises earnings and parities; this page and the chart use the version accessed on 2026-10-01.

Licence and disclaimer

The chart, its embed and its data files are offered under CC BY 4.0 with the credit printed on them — see Licence for reuse. The pump prices come from the European Commission’s EU Weekly Oil Bulletin (CC BY 4.0); the chart is not an official publication of the European Commission. Earnings, hours and price levels: Eurostat (earn_nt_net, lfsa_ewhun2, prc_ppp_ind_1), reused under the Eurostat copyright notice (reuse authorised, also commercially, provided the source is acknowledged); the data have been modified — combined with the bulletin prices as described above — and the calculation is by fuel-prices.eu. Eurostat is not responsible for this calculation.

Last updated: 1 October 2026. Data files with every input and intermediate value: CSV · JSON.