Judging by the statement of President Aleksandar Vucic, Serbia is taking giant steps into the bright future, and one of the indicators, he claims, is the growth of salaries.
In the last month of last year, we reached the magic limit of 500 euros of average salary, and already in March, he told us the good news two days ago, a new jump was recorded.
– That’s what we’ve been waiting for. We knew that March was that reference month. According to preliminary data, 555 euros compared to 330 when I became Prime Minister. That is a huge progress of Serbia and you are responsible for that, and above all you are responsible because Serbia is no longer a country of losers but a country of winners that can compete in everything and beat those who have been ahead of us for decades, he said in a video posted on his Instagram account “buducnostsrbijeav”. He added that “we have to work and try to raise salaries to more than 600 euros before the end of the year.”
What did the president keep quiet about? Perhaps the fact that our gross domestic product has not grown in the last ten years, when we compare, at the same pace, and that the jump in wages is “a little unrealistic” as economists claim, and primarily produced after an increase in the public sector that does not cover budget growth, income nor in the increased production of social wealth.
– The growth of salaries in the previous year is a consequence of the measures by which the government tried to maintain the level of salaries and employment as much as possible. They have invested a lot of money in that and those measures are still in place. Businesses are still taking state aid, which has largely dampened the decline that could have followed the pandemic. The question is whether this trend of salary growth will be sustainable until the end of the year and whether the average salary will be able to reach 600 euros as promised – Jelena Zarkovic Rakic, director of FREN, told Danas.
She points out that with the economic policy, the government mostly attracted factories that employed people from the domain of low-paid jobs, mostly at the level of the minimum or just a little more than it, and then it is normal that the average employment was in the category of better paid jobs.
Economist Sasa Djogovic says that the jump in the average salary is expected because at the beginning of this year, there was an increase in salaries in the public sector as well as an increase in the minimum price of labor, which greatly affects the overall average.
– In general, the public sector gave the main impetus and tone in the dynamics of growth of average wages and a slight increase in the purchasing power of the population, and that is not good because the private sector lags behind us. This is illustrated by the fact that the lowest median salary in the public sector is higher than in the private sector, which is below the medial, so with less job security it is damaged by low compensation for their work – says Djogovic and adds that non-transparent subsidies for foreign direct investment should be taken into account, where the aim was to attract labor-intensive activities, which means that the state, with its economic policy, also sponsored lower wages in the private sector.
However, the “golden age” best shows the relationship between income and the price of a basket of groceries, and the picture is not bright here.
According to the Ministry of Trade, in 2012 1.4 salaries were needed to cover the costs of the average consumer basket, while in February this year (the last published data on the value of the consumer basket) 1.2 was necessary.
The comparison with the minimum wage does not show a very dizzying growth of purchasing power, because the minimum basket in 2012 required 1.75, and in February this year 1.3 minimum wages.
An even bigger problem is that the minimum wages are received by a huge number of employees, it is estimated at around 350,000, and half of the workers, more than 1.12 million of them, can count on the amount below the median, which is 410 euros.
It is even gloomier when compared to the countries of the region.
In Slovenia, for example, the average salary last year was 1,209 euros, the minimum guaranteed salary was 941 euros, and only 3.7 percent of employees received it.
In Croatia, the average salary is around 850 euros, the minimum is 400, and an even smaller percentage received it, only 2.25 percent of employees. Serbia is only in the middle of the table because about 16 percent of workers received a guaranteed salary of around 250 euros.
In Montenegro, the average salary is around 520 euros, but 28% of workers receive a minimum of 220 euros. The average salary in Northern Macedonia is 420 euros and 234 is guaranteed for 28 percent, while in BiH the average is 485 euros and 210 minimum salaries are received by about 30 percent of employees.
Yesterday, the Republic Bureau of Statistics officially published the data that the president had previously made public. The average salary in March was 555 euros and the median was 410 euros, Danas reports.
