Prices CUTS ARE TRANSFERRED TO WAGES
The legal maximum pay, as of August 2024, is essentially 6, 800 kyat per day. This includes a daily base wage ( last updated in 2018 ) of 4, 800 kyat, plus two additional 1, 000 kyat daily allowances, announced in 2023 and 2024. Since its most recent revision in 2018, the minimum wage would now be about 12, 000 kyat per day.
Real income have likewise fallen considerably. Data from H&, M- one of the few companies providing clear data – indicates that wages ( including guaranteed pay but excluding variable things like overtime and prizes ) increased from 199, 000 kyat a month in 2020 to 248, 000 kyat a month at end-2023, an increase of 25 per cent.
Over this exact time, the CPI increased an estimated 88 per cent and the cost of a typical diet, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, increased 160 per cent.
The result is that an H&, M income, which in 2020 was more than enough to supply an ordinary home, was no more do so by end-2023. While some businesses increased income by 20-30 per share in 2024 in response to post-conscription worker shortages, this has not offset decades of declining true income.
The wage drop is caused by a number of factors. The major culprit is high inflation, which is fueled in large part by the military government’s money printing and widespread disdain of the kyat.
Businesses also have a business setting that is becoming more and more ineffective. Electricity source has deteriorated: Yangon’s industrial zones then average 20 days of disruptions per day. Nearly every factory owns a machine, which pays significantly more for on 62 % of their strength.
With significant delays to get pathways to China and Thailand as a result of fighting, shipping is more expensive and complicated. Since the enlistment law was made public in February 2024, employees have also been leaving more often.
Growing difficulties are partially offset by the kyat’s loss, where companies sell in foreign currency but have the highest costs there. Factory output is also higher than the military regime’s complicated forex regime, yet with a complex forex regime.
If companies took the exact amount of US money they paid for wages in 2020- about US$ 140 a quarter, according to H&, M, and gave workers the kyat received from exchanging that now, they would get over 400, 000 kyat a quarter. Instead, H&, M’s data shows that in US dollar terms, wages were down from US$ 140 in 2020 to just US$ 94 a month in 2023.