Average Salary in Tunisia in 2026: Cost & Trends

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Tunisia is on your radar, and for good reason. You’ve heard about the talent in Tunis, Sfax, or Sousse, or the multilingual developers perfect for distributed teams.

You also see salary numbers that look promising. Average wages are low compared to your home market, and remote roles advertised in Tunisian dinars feel affordable on paper.

It’s when you start digging into the details that it gets messy fast. One site quotes a national average salary that seems surprisingly low. Another shows mid-range IT roles that pay several times more. None of them explains what those figures actually mean for your budget or for someone’s real life in Tunisia.

If you want to set a fair offer, understand what a role is really worth, or figure out whether you could live comfortably on a Tunisian salary, you need context. That means looking at regional differences, minimum wage rules, typical benefits, and what those dinars actually buy each month.

This guide gives you a clear, practical view of how salaries in Tunisia work so you can hire, negotiate, or relocate with confidence.

Understanding the average salary in Tunisia

When you search for the average salary in Tunisia, you see a wide spread of numbers. That is not a mistake. Different sources use different datasets, mix public and private sector data, and report either gross or net figures.

Recent survey data suggests many full-time workers in Tunisia earn somewhere in the mid hundreds of dinars per month at the lower end, and into the low thousands of dinars in more skilled roles. Aggregated government and recruitment data often puts the national average salary just above 800 Tunisian dinars (US$280) per month for 2025.

On its own, that number is not very helpful. It blends together a junior hotel worker in Sousse, a mid-career finance specialist in Tunis, and a civil servant with long tenure and solid benefits. To make it more practical, it helps to think in rough bands:

Lower-paid and informal roles often sit below 800 dinars per month, especially outside major cities.
Mid-range office, administrative, and service roles typically fall somewhere between 1,000 (US$350) and 2,500 dinars (US$878) per month.
Skilled professionals in fields like software engineering, finance, and senior management often start around 3,000 dinars (US$1054) per month and can move beyond 6,000 dinars (US$2108) in high responsibility roles.

Sector differences are sharp. Salary benchmarks from tools like Paylab show information technology near the top of the pay scale, with tourism and hospitality closer to the national average, and some public sector roles lagging behind but offering stability and better benefits.

This means a single national average is not enough to set salaries. You need to look at bands by role, sector, and seniority, then cross-check them against your own structure. Pebl’s guide on how to hire and pay employees in Tunisia helps you connect these benchmarks to contracts, payroll, and compliance.

Location adds another layer. Tunis usually offers higher salaries and higher costs, while cities like Sfax and Sousse sit slightly lower on both counts. Outside major hubs, wages drop again, especially in agriculture and informal work. Deciding whether you will anchor pay to one national band or adjust by location in Tunisia should be part of your compensation strategy from the start.

Minimum wage and how salaries are structured

Average salaries tell you what is common. Minimum wage tells you where the legal floor starts.

Tunisia’s minimum wage is split into two concepts:

SMIG: the guaranteed minimum interprofessional wage for non-agricultural workers.
SMAG: the guaranteed minimum agricultural wage for farm workers.

Recent updates put the national minimum for non-agricultural workers just under 500 dinars per month (US$160) for a standard workweek. For agricultural workers, minimums are often expressed as daily rates that vary by region and type of work.

Government guidance also translates the monthly SMIG into an hourly rate slightly above 2 dinars per hour, depending on whether the standard workweek is 40 or 48 hours.

On a typical Tunisian pay slip you will see three main things:

Gross base salary, usually expressed as a monthly figure
Allowances, such as transport, meal stipends, or housing support
Deductions for employee social security and personal income tax

Many employers use a simple rule of thumb that net pay will land at roughly 70 to 80% of gross salary for mid-range earners, but the actual figure depends on benefits, dependents, and tax status. On your side, employer social security contributions and other charges can add around 16% or more on top of gross salary.

Pebl’s employee cost guide walks through how to turn salary and on-cost items into a single cost per hire, so you can put Tunisia side by side with other markets.

Average salary vs. cost of living

Salary numbers only make sense when you connect them to everyday prices. Tunisia is more affordable than most Western markets, but inflation and currency pressure have narrowed that gap in recent years.

Recent cost of living data for Tunis shows that a single person needs around 1,300 to 1,400 dinars per month for basic expenses excluding rent. A family of four needs closer to 5,000 dinars before housing. Rent varies by city and neighborhood but remains far below major European and U.S. cities.

To make the numbers less abstract, here are two simplified monthly budget sketches.

Single professional in Tunis on 1,800 dinars net per month

Shared apartment room in a mid range neighborhood: 500 to 700 dinars
Utilities and internet: 150 to 200 dinars
Groceries and household items: 400 to 500 dinars
Transport, eating out, and social life combined: 400 to 500 dinars

At this level, you can live modestly in the capital if you share housing and keep an eye on discretionary spending.

Family of four in Sousse on 4,500 dinars net per month

Three-bedroom apartment in a family-friendly neighborhood: 1,200 to 1,500 dinars
Utilities and internet: 250 to 300 dinars
Groceries and household items: 1,200 to 1,400 dinars
School costs, child care, and transport combined: 800 to 1,000 dinars

Here, the family can live reasonably well, but private schooling or frequent travel can put real pressure on the budget.

A useful benchmark for you is the concept of a living wage. The Anker Research Institute’s living wage reference value for rural Tunisia estimates that a basic but decent standard of living for a typical worker’s family requires a monthly living wage close to 1,000 dinars (US$351) in 2025. Urban living, especially in Tunis and high-demand coastal cities, usually requires more.

If you are designing salary bands, it often helps to think in tiers:

Below 1,000 dinars per month: survival level for a single person in lower cost regions, often inadequate for a family
Around 1,500 to 2,500 dinars: more realistic for comfortable living in secondary cities, still tight in Tunis for families
Above 3,000 dinars: room for savings and more discretionary spending, especially outside the capital

Pebl’s resources on calculating the employee cost of living and our global hiring hub help you turn these rough tiers into concrete budgets and salary bands.

Wage trends and market pressures

To understand where Tunisian salaries may go next, you also need to look at wage trends.

Global data from the International Labour Organization’s Global Wage Report 2024–25 shows that real wages in many lower and middle-income countries have struggled to keep up with inflation, even when nominal pay increased on paper. Tunisia fits that pattern.

Inflation hovered around mid-single digits for much of the 2010s, then pushed higher after the pandemic period. Estimates suggest consumer prices rose by roughly seven percent in 2024, eroding part of any pay gains workers saw during that time. Anker’s Tunisia living wage work also highlights how quickly gaps can open up between wages and the cost of a basic but decent standard of living.

The practical takeaway is that salary ranges should be moving targets, not static tables. Reviewing Tunisian pay data at least once a year and cross-checking it against inflation and living wage benchmarks will keep your offers realistic and competitive.

Tips and resources for candidates and employers

If you are a candidate applying for roles in Tunisia, a little preparation goes a long way.

Start by mapping your target salary range to real-life numbers. Use cost-of-living data for Tunis and other major cities, then compare that against typical net salaries for your role. Public tools and surveys from independent providers, along with local portals such as Paylab, can help you triangulate a realistic range instead of guessing.

When you apply, be clear about your expectations. Share a range in Tunisian dinars and say whether you mean gross or net. If you are relocating from abroad, explain how you arrived at that number and which benchmarks you used.

For your CV and cover letter, focus on:

Concrete outcomes in past roles, such as revenue impact, savings, or uptime
Any French, Arabic, or English language skills that matter for Tunisian employers
Experience working in remote, distributed, or cross-border teams

If you are a hiring manager, flip the same principles. Share your band up front, state clearly whether it is gross or net, and explain how often you review compensation.

How an employer of record can help in Tunisia

If you are hiring in Tunisia without a local legal entity, an Employer of Record (EOR) can take most of the operational weight off your shoulders.

An employer of record is a specialist partner that becomes the legal employer on paper for your team in Tunisia. The EOR signs the local employment contract, runs payroll, withholds and remits taxes and CNSS contributions, administers statutory benefits, and keeps you aligned with Tunisian labor law. You still choose the person, set their day-to-day responsibilities, and manage performance.

In practical terms, using an EOR in Tunisia means you can:

Hire full time talent without setting up a local company.
Pay salaries in Tunisian dinars while budgeting in your home currency.
Offer compliant benefits and leave from day one, without learning every statute yourself.

Using a top-rated EOR in Tunisia, such as Pebl, also helps you benchmark salaries and total compensation using current country specific data. If immigration is part of your plan, such as relocating an employee into Tunisia, an EOR handles it. If you want to go it alone, you can find up to date guidance in our Tunisia work visa and legal authorization guide.

How Pebl can help you hire and pay in Tunisia

If Tunisia is on your roadmap, you don’t need to become a local payroll expert to hire and pay people correctly—that’s where Pebl comes in.

Pebl helps you hire, pay, and support talent in Tunisia without setting up a local entity. Through our employer of record service in Tunisia, you can put employees on compliant local contracts, run payroll that respects Tunisian tax and social security rules, and offer market-appropriate benefits.

For companies comparing Tunisia to other markets, our global hiring hub lets you model total onboarding cost for roles across multiple countries, including gross to net calculations and employer contributions. You can align salary bands with your location-based pay strategy so Tunisian team members are paid fairly, and standardize offer letters, benefits, and compliance workflows while still adapting to local norms.

When you’re ready to make hiring in Tunisia easy, let us know.

This information does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal or tax advice and is for general informational purposes only. The intent of this document is solely to provide general and preliminary information for private use. Do not rely on it as an alternative to legal, financial, taxation, or accountancy advice from an appropriately qualified professional. The content in this guide is provided “as is,” and no representations are made that the content is error-free.