Pharmaceutical, IT and energy companies paid the highest salaries in Slovenia last year, with SAP and Microsoft topping the list, according to data compiled by the business news portal Finance. Slovenia Control ranks the highest among local companies.

The Slovenian offices of the software companies SAP and Microsoft paid €11,781 and €10,658, respectively, in average gross monthly salary in 2023, which compares to the national average of €2,221, according to Finance, which compiled the list based on data from the Dun & Bradstreet business base, the agency for public legal records AJPES and companies' annual reports. Banks were not included on the list.

Ranking third and fourth are pharmaceutical companies Novo Nordisk and Merck Sharp & Dohme, which paid roughly €8,500 in average gross monthly pay, followed by tech companies Infobip and IBM Slovenija, where such pay topped €8,000.

Slovenia Control, Slovenian Air Navigation Services, ranked seventh with average monthly gross pay of €7,810, ahead of three more pharmaceutical companies - Roche, Astellas Pharma and Pfizer.

The top ten high-paying companies are followed by the steel group SIJ (€7,263), Astra Zeneca (€7,020), Novartis Pharma Services (€7,002), Impol 2000 (€6,107), Bayer (€6,104), Johnson & Johnson (€5,923), Gen (€5,692), LeanIX (EUR 5,667) and Mol & Ina (€5,609). The top twenty also include Triglav Skladi (€5,396), the asset manager of the insurance company Zavarovalnica Triglav.

More than half of the top 100 high-paying employers are owned by foreigners. SAP employees earned 50% more a month that the employees of the highest-paying Slovenian company, Slovenia Control.

About one-fifth of the companies on the list are state-owned. Slovenia Control is followed by Gen Energija, the holding company of the energy group that also includes the Krško nuclear power plant, with an average monthly gross salary of €5,693, ahead of HSE, the holding company of the other major energy group, with €5,250.

Borzen, the national electricity market operator, paid out 10% higher average gross monthly pay last year compared to the year before, at just over €5,000.

Slovenian Sovereign Holding, the custodian of state assets, ranked seventh among state-owned companies with the highest average monthly pay, at €4,727 gross.

Among drug makers that also have production facilities in Slovenia, Lek and Krka made it to the list with the average monthly gross salaries of €4,087 and €3,814, respectively.