Riga: the Baltic capital with room to hire

Already operating in Riga

Accenture · SEB Global Services · Circle K · Tieto · Transcom · VISMA · C.T.CO · Cabot · Grindeks · Schneider Electric · DB Schenker · Groglass

The screening figures, in one place

Riga generates half of Latvia's GDP and exports. It is home to 32% of the country's population; the metropolitan area holds around 46%, the highest capital-region concentration in the European Union.

Latvia average: 97.7 companies per 1,000 inhabitants.

Seven sectors, seven sets of numbers

Riga City Council identifies seven priority sectors for foreign investment. Each has its own page with wages, costs, incentives and the companies already operating there.

What it costs

Gross monthly wages by activity, Riga

Wages have risen steadily: €1,535 in 2022, €1,706 in 2023, €1,869 in 2024, €2,028 in Q3 2025 - roughly 32% over three years. We publish the series rather than the latest figure, because the trajectory matters more than the snapshot when you are modelling five years out.

Premises and living costs

The office market is moving in the tenant's favour, on a known schedule

What is being built

The security question, answered with numbers

Every board evaluating the Baltics asks it. No investment promotion site in the region answers it, which we think is a mistake - silence reads worse than facts.

Risk here is not unpriced. It has been priced, by people whose job it is, and the price is investment grade.

Riga against the alternatives, honestly

Vilnius city wages are not published in a citable form; the Lithuanian national figure is shown instead. Vilnius sits above the national average, so the gap to Riga is wider than this table shows.

Where Riga wins: labour cost, market saturation, forward office supply, metropolitan scale within the Baltics.

Where Riga does not win, and we will not pretend otherwise:

• Vilnius (Lithuania) has a deeper business services sector, better sector data and a decade's head start. Lithuania publishes an annual GBS report surveying 64 companies employing over 24,000 professionals. Riga has no equivalent. If your requirement is a mature cluster with proven scale, Vilnius is the stronger answer today.
• Warsaw and Kraków (Poland) offer far greater absolute scale. If you need to hire 2,000 people in one location, Poland is the answer.
• Sofia (Bulgaria) is cheaper.
• Helsinki (Finland) and Stockholm (Sweden) offer a quality and stability premium that costs roughly double.

Riga's case is specific: the largest labour pool in the Baltics, the least competition per hire, and lower cost than Tallinn or Vilnius. If that is what your business case needs, the numbers are on this page.

Documents in preparation

We are building four downloadable resources. Each will be published with its methodology and a revision date.

Talk to someone who knows your sector

We reply within one business day. First contact is a conversation, not a form: tell us the function, the headcount and the timeline, and we will send back the relevant cost and talent data within three working days. There is no charge at any stage.

Placeholder contacts. Portraits are AI-generated for demonstration.

Once you're here

Setting up. Company registration, banking, accounting and legal introductions.

Hiring. Recruitment partners, typical timelines, employment law basics.

Relocating your team. Residence permits, international schools - Riga has several offering IB, Cambridge, British and American programmes, with children from more than 50 countries - housing, healthcare and cost of living.

Growing. Green Corridor fast-tracking for priority projects with a single named curator. Special Economic Zones offering an 80% rebate on corporate and real estate tax. Up to 90% real estate tax reduction for qualifying Riga projects. Relocation co-financing for highly qualified specialists.

Most foreign investment worldwide is expansion by companies already present. If you are one of them, the same support applies.