A resident's average gross annual income was €16,000 in Estonia, €11,900 in Latvia and €11,100 in Lithuania, Zane Kaktina, head of the Business Analysis Department and Viktors Troicins, chief commercial officer (CCO) of Maxima Latvia said at the chain's retail conference in Riga on Thursday.

Of the three Baltic countries, income inequality is greatest in Lithuania, standing at a difference of 7.1-fold between the top and bottom quintiles, followed by 6.8-fold in Latvia and 5.1-fold in Estonia.

While income inequality has been on the decline in Estonia and Latvia in recent years, in Latvia it has seen an increase instead. According to the Maxima analyst, this is attributable primarily to great regional differences in Latvia.

Latvia also simultaneously has the highest rate of unemployment and the biggest number of vacant jobs among the three countries, indicating that employers and job-seekers in Latvia are unable to find one another.

Overall, the economies of the three neighboring countries are displaying similar trends, with unemployment on the decline, wages growing and the consumer price index (CPI) increasing at a similar pace, Maxima Latvija noted.

The biggest future challenge is also the same in all three countries — declining and aging populations, which are beginning to cause increasingly greater problems in the structure of the three countries' respective workforces.

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