A 'dignified' gross minimum wage in the Czech Republic is 31,460 crowns monthly, say experts

Prague, Dec 12 (CTK) – The dignified monthly gross minimum wage for full time work, sufficient to cover basic needs, free-time activities and small savings, is 31,463 crowns in the Czech Republic this year, experts told reporters today.

In Prague, the sum is higher, 36,850 crowns, due to higher costs of living, they added.

A team of experts took the costs of food, housing, clothes, transport, health care, education, free time and savings for unexpected expenditures for two persons in the calculation of the dignified minimum wage.

Lucie Trlifajova, from the Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (AV), and Katerina Smejkalova, from the Fridrich Ebert Foundation, presented their results at a press conference today.

According to the Czech Statistical Office’s (CSU) data, the average monthly gross pay in the Czech Republic was 33,697 crowns in the third quarter of 2019, but a half of working people earned under 29,549 crowns a month before taxation.

“Half of the people do not reach the dignified minimum wage in our country. Those are the people in low-qualified professions as well as women who earn one-fifth less than men on average in our country,” Smejkalova said.

However, even people with higher qualification and education do not get the dignified minimum pay, for instance, clerks at local offices, social workers, university lecturers, cooks at schools, theatre staff and philharmonic players, she added.

More than 20 experts on social issues, economists, sociologists and political scientists have been working on the concept of the dignified minimum income since 2016.

Their calculations are based of the data from the CSU, ministries and other institutions. They calculated a remuneration for full time work of a person supporting another household member, either a child or an adult.