Teacher salaries set to lose purchasing power in 2026
Education workers waited for almost a year for their pay to be indexed at least in line with inflation, but no such increase materialised. While the government led by Maia Sandu continues to seek funding for new military programmes and foreign trips, the education system remains chronically underfunded.
According to former Prime Minister Vlad Filat, education’s share of total public expenditure has continued to decline. It fell from 18.4% in 2019 to 14.9% in 2026, which he described as the lowest level in the history of the Republic of Moldova and equivalent to more than 5.4 billion lei removed from the education system in real terms.
The PAS government has proposed increasing teachers’ pay by only 4% in 2026, significantly below the inflation rate. Filat said this would not represent an increase in income, but a further decline in teachers’ purchasing power.
“Such an approach is not only cynical, but also deeply irresponsible towards the country’s future,” Filat said.
Earlier disputes over funding in Chișinău
Problems with teacher salaries have become increasingly recurrent. At the end of 2024, teachers in Chișinău faced a similar situation when Mayor Ion Ceban said the government had allocated only 36.9 million lei for salaries out of the 201 million lei required.
In November 2025, amendments to the municipal budget were again discussed in order to pay teachers’ salaries and annual bonuses. However, PAS effectively opposed the amendments, while mayoral adviser Victor Pruteanu accused the party’s councillors of sabotage and political intimidation.
“Yesterday, in the hall of the Chișinău Municipal Council, I saw teachers who came in the hope that the problem would be resolved. These were people with 10, 20 or 30 years of experience, devoted to children and schools, with emotion in their eyes and confidence that their problem would be addressed. Unfortunately, instead of dialogue and solutions, they witnessed a political show and, in effect, the sabotage of the meeting. Today, two municipal councillors from the governing party, PAS, went and submitted a notification to the National Anticorruption Center. This gesture clearly shows that they are using classic instruments of intimidation, seeking to turn a problem affecting ordinary people essentially an administrative and legal issue into a political spectacle,” Pruteanu said.
At the time, Socialist MP Vladimir Odnostalco accused the government of “humiliating teachers”. “If there is no professional foundation, then who exactly are you governing?” he asked.
Critics say real pay has fallen since 2021
Teachers ultimately saw no inflation-linked indexation. Former Prime Minister Ion Chicu, leader of the Alternative bloc, said that their real incomes had already declined substantially since PAS came to power.
“In 2026, for the first time in eight years, teachers’ salaries will not be increased by even 1%. Their real salary is 10% lower than it was in 2021,” Chicu said.
The figures cited by opposition politicians suggest that teacher salaries are losing value while education receives a smaller share of public spending. Despite repeated disputes over unpaid salaries, bonuses and indexation, the government has yet to provide educators with an increase matching inflation.
