The Cuesta Duarte Instituteresearch and training organization of the PIT-CNT, with the support of INEFOP, presented their most recent study “How much do Uruguayan workers earn? Labor income levels and submerged wages – First half of 2022”, an in-depth analysis of the Continuous Household Survey (ECH) of the first semester of 2022, and highlighted a series of data derived from it, related to salary and household income.
It stands out that, in the first half of the year, 541,000 people in a situation of employment received remunerations below $25,000 liquid for working 40 hours a week, representing 35% of the total number of employed people. Among these, 169,000 failed to exceed $15,000.
For their part, some 357,000 received wages between $25,000 and $35,000 (19%). Another group with a better economic situation, earn between $35,000 and $50,000, while 358,000 employed persons received monthly income above $50,000 liquid (23%).
“The analysis shows that the Uruguayan labor market continues to exhibit problems in relation to the quality of employment. Added to the high number of employed persons who work in conditions of informality, underemployment and other forms of job insecurity, it is observed that insufficient income affects a very important proportion of the total number of male and female workers”, said the institute in the summary of its report. study.
two years of fall
According to Cuesta Duarte, labor incomes have fallen for the last consecutive yearsand that has caused an increase in the proportion of workers with submerged salaries.
To quantify this deterioration, the wage distribution for the first half of this year was compared with the same period in 2020, using a cluster of constant prices for June 2022 as the basis.
“The comparison shows that while in the first half of 2020 the proportion of employed and salaried workers with labor income of less than $25,000 affected 34% and 28% respectively, in the first half of 2022 the percentages grow and are located at 35% and 29%. The total number of employed twenty-five thousand weights it grew from 494,000 to 541,000 while wage earners with submerged levels went from 300,000 to 320,000. Therefore, it is possible to conclude that not only is the proportion of workers with submerged wages very high, but that the situation has been worsening since 2020,” the agency explained.
This is the comparative table between those two time periods:
Once again, women are the most affected
Women are the ones who receive the strongest blow from this drop in purchasing power: among employed women, 37% are in the submerged income bracket, while for men this percentage is 33%.
“In the case of workers in a dependency relationship, the proportion of women with levels below $25,000 liquid per month is also 4 percentage points higher than that of men (31% versus 27% respectively). In the case of those who receive salaries, although as a whole the majority are men, female wage earners who earn less than $25,000 liquid per month outnumber men, both in relative and absolute terms”, explained Cuesta Duarte.
