Salary for 2022, the most hit by inflation since 2000

Between January and October of this year, the general minimum wage in force for 2022 has lost 5.8% of its value, this year being the minimum wage with the greatest decrease in purchasing power so far this century, which coincides with the most aggressive inflationary escalation in the country in more than two decades.

Set at a level of 172.87 nominal daily pesos in December 2021, the general minimum wage for 2022 already deflated – using the National Consumer Price Index (INPC) of up to a minimum wage based on the second half of July 2018 – It had a value of 146.5 pesos per day in January 2022, an amount that fell 5.8% to 137.99 pesos last October, the most recent date for which there are data from the price index used as a deflator.

Before 2022, the year with the greatest intra-annual deterioration in the value of the minimum wage for a similar period was 2000, when the fall was 5.2%, going from 61.89 to 58.66 pesos per day between January and October.

Between January and last October, the general INPC had an increase of 6.2%, its largest expansion for a parallel period since 1999. Meanwhile, the interannual general inflation for October was 8.41%, a figure slightly lower than the 8.7% of September .

Despite this, until October the real minimum wage showed an average growth of 13.1% year-on-year, thanks to the fact that, nominally, the increase to the minimum this year was 22%, the highest recorded to date.

In real terms, this is the second fastest progress since the policy to recover the purchasing power of the minimum wage began, only below the 16% observed in 2020.

The inflation of 2021-2022 is a largely global phenomenon, fueled by problems such as the impact on food and energy supply chains due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or the uneven impact that Covid-19 had on the production of international goods and services and logistics.

octavio.amador@eleconomista.mx