He minimum wage will have an increase of 9.54% for next year, thus remaining at 1,423,500 pesos without transportation assistance and 1,623,000 pesos with this benefit.
This increase is one of the highest in recent years, something that the President Gustavo Petro has highlighted, despite the fact that it has been issued by decree and not as an agreement between the Government, the labor confederations and the businessmen.
(You can read: ‘There are more people employed and greater purchasing power,’ says Mintrabajo).
Even so, an enormous discussion has been generated regarding the real increase in the minimum wage (that which is measured according to the variation of inflation), to the point that Petro himself and his predecessor in the House of Nariño, Iván Duquethey had a crossroads of comments on the social network X regarding this topic.
And the former president recently assured that the largest real increase was made during his government, when, as mentioned, he was the one who set the minimum wage for 2022, with a positive variation of 4.4%.
(You may be interested in: How much will the minimum wage be in Latin American countries in 2025?).
Workers in Colombia who will not receive payment of the minimum wage.
iStock
“In 2022 (set for December 2021), we achieve the largest real increase in the minimum wage in the last 50 years, an increase that not even those who call themselves ‘progressives’ have been able to surpass. Our increase coincided with the year of greatest growth in the history of Colombia“said Duque.
To which Petro responded: “Here is Duque’s big lie, which he is aware of, and which some analysts eat whole. Confuse the norm, as it seeks to establish a minimum wage, with the economic concept of a real minimum wage. In economics, the current year’s minimum wage is not compared with last year’s inflation, but rather with that of the year the salary was in effect.“.
(Read also: This is how Colombia’s minimum wage has evolved in the last 10 years).
And it is that, According to data shared by the current head of state, the real increase in 2025, decreed by him, is 6.54%while in 2022 it was -3.05%.
“If the data is handled this way, the year 2022 was not the year with the highest real minimum wage in history but one in which the minimum wage fell 3 percent. It is the year of hunger in Colombia“, added the president.
Minimum wage
Oscar Giraldo
How much has the minimum wage increased in real terms?
Regarding the salary increase, Fedesarrollo published what the real increase in the minimum wage has been this century and its data are similar to those shown by Iván Duque.
– 2000: 0.7%
– 2001: 1.06%
– 2002: 0.37%
– 2003: 0.42%
– 2004: 1.26%
– 2005: 0.95%
– 2006: 2%
– 2007: 1.74%
– 2008: 0.68%
– 2009: 0%
– 2010: 1.67%
– 2011: 0.80%
– 2012: 2%
– 2013: 1.55%
– 2014: 2.51%
– 2015: 0.91%
– 2016: 0.22%
– 2017: 1.18%
– 2018: 1.74%
– 2019: 2.73%
– 2020: 2.12%
– 2021: 1.86%
– 2022: 4.21%
– 2023: 1.33%
– 2024: 2.49%
– 2025: 4.17%
“With inflation expected to be 5.15% this year, the increase in the minimum wage by 2025 is one of the highest in the century in real terms (discounting inflation). This increase is similar to that of 2022, which generated negative effects on the labor market and prices, by increasing inflation during that year and the next.“he asserted Luis Fernando Mejía, executive director of the economic research center.
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