The labor market for others is experiencing a new wage dynamic with wages rising from the guaranteed minimum monthly wage, which has risen by €55 or 7.8% to €760 this year. The weight of the national minimum wage (SMN) at work fell to 20.8% in the second quarter, the lowest value since 2016 (21%), the first year of the socialist government of António Costa, the homologous comparison shows the most recent data from the Ministry of Labor requested by Dinheiro Vivo.
This move comes despite the fact that “the minimum wage has risen by 50% and more than a million workers have been registered with Social Security since 2015,” Labor Minister Ana Mendes Godinho stressed in statements to the DV. If we analyze the evolution of the minimum remuneration since 2015, which was 505 euros, and until 2023, when it increased to 760 euros, there is a significant increase of 255 euros gross per month, which corresponds to an increase of 50.5%. The labor force hired for third parties also rose to over four million.
Traditionally, new increases in the minimum wage result in more workers earning that value, which is set by the government, bringing the minimum wage closer to the median wage. In the second quarter of 2021 and 2022, the years in which the SMN amounted to 665 euros and 705 euros respectively, almost a quarter of the working population was in this cake. But the biggest peak occurred in 2020, when this salary rose by 35 euros or 5.8% to 635 euros: more than 27% of the working population earned the legal minimum.
The year 2023 brings a different reality, even though the percentage of workers with MNS has fallen since the start of the pandemic (2020). In the second quarter, 838,111 workers, or 20.8% of the total of more than 4,030,919 people reported to Social Security, received the minimum wage, a rate that fell 3.5 percentage points compared to the same period in 2022, when 24.3% of employees earned. the SMN. In percentage terms, it is also the lowest value in seven years. In absolute terms, there was a decrease of 98 thousand employees, since last year the wage bill of 935,860 employees was indexed according to the SMN.
Gender inequality has improved significantly. “The difference between the number of men and women with NMS has never been smaller than in this last quarter,” emphasizes Ana Mendes Godinho. In 2016, 77,336 more women received the NMS than men. Now only 5335 female employees have more NMS compared to men. In other words, according to the Ministry’s statistics, wage inequality has decreased by 93%. In more detail, in the second quarter, 421,723 workers earned the minimum wage, 5,335 more compared to men (416,388). Data from the same period of 2022 shows a much larger difference: there were 480,630 female workers on the minimum wage, which is 25,401 more than the number of men (455,229).
“Usually the incidence of NMS is higher in women than in men, but in the second quarter we only had a difference of 5,000, and the lowest number we’ve ever had was about 20,000 more women earning the minimum wage compared to other countries. for men”, emphasizes the Minister of Labor. And he adds, “Basically, we manage to match the percentage of men and women with NMS.”
In addition, fewer young people receive the minimum. For example, the percentage of people under the age of 25 who worked fell by 4.7% compared to 2022. In absolute figures, 78 thousand earned the guaranteed minimum wage in the first quarter of 2023, nine thousand less than in the same period last year. last year, even though youth employment has grown, according to information from the guardianship. However, the Ministry’s data still does not provide detailed information on the distribution of the minimum wage by type of contract (fixed or uncertain) and by level of education.
According to Mendes Godinho, “these figures show that the labor market is increasingly deviating from the minimum wage”. “Labour shortages, inflation, a near-zero real increase in the minimum wage and the dynamics of collective bargaining” are some of the factors explaining this downward trajectory relative to the weight of the SMN, explains DV, the professor at the University of Minho, out. specialist in labor economics, João Cerejeira.
“With the end of the pandemic, activities such as tourism and trade recovered and started to hire more people, demand increased,” said Cerejeira. In this scenario, and taking into account that, in real terms, i.e. net of inflation, the increase in the SMN has been virtually nil over the past two years, companies felt pressured to further increase wages. increase,” he continued. on the other hand, “the collective recruitment that was frozen during the covid-19 period is now recovering, with an increase in the number of contracts and workers covered by it, which also raises wages, as these tools generally ensure for better wages and conditions for workers,” he concludes.
Salomé Pinto is a journalist for Dinheiro Vivo
Source: DN
