The Average Salary of Cubans

The Average Salary of Cubans

August 6, 2013

Isbel Díaz Torres



HAVANA TIMES — The "Average Salary in Figures" report for 2012,

published by Cuba's National Statistics and Information Bureau (ONEI)

this past June, reveals that the current average salary of Cubans is 466

pesos (CUP) a month.



This is roughly the equivalent of 20 CUC (US $22), the hard currency

which affords Cubans any real purchasing power on the island (though no

State employee is paid in it).



The report offers two series of statistical data. The first lists the

country's average monthly salary per province. Here, we find out that

Ciego de Avila (at 515 CUP) currently reports Cuba's highest salary,

while Santiago de Cuba (at 433 CUP) is at the bottom of the list.



The second set of statistics is considerably more interesting. It

reports the average monthly salaries of different "types of economic

activities". The results presented were:



Agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing – 513 CUP

Mining and quarry work – 566 CUP

Manufacturing industry – 466 CUP

Electricity, gas and water – 522 CUP

Construction – 580 CUP

Retail, restaurants and hotels – 376 CUP

Transportation, storage and communications – 460 CUP

Financial establishments, insurance, real estate and services for

companies – 432 CUP

Garbage collection, social and personal services – 425 CUP



In this section, construction work reports the highest salaries, while

retail, restaurants and hotels come out last.



Concealment Strategies



According to the report's "methodological definitions", the second set

of indicators do not take into account incomes earned on the basis of

profit distribution or other payments made to workers in cash or kind.



Nor do they include earnings in convertible pesos, stemming from certain

types of payments and work incentives, which, if considered, would bring

up the average for "Retail, restaurants and hotels" ostensibly (to

mention only one case).



The arbitrary and absurd use of such "categories" – wholly divorced from

Cuban reality – is one of the ways in which the State conceals useful,

comparative information.



The difference between the average salaries earned in the State sector,

private foreign firms based in Cuba (with Cuban employees and managers),

cooperatives and the self-employed sector is the kind of information

that would have been useful to us.



It would also have been interesting to find out what differences exist

between that part of the population which comprises Cuba's "cadres,

leaders and officials" and all other employees (without administrative

or political duties).



In addition, the statistical "average" is deceitful in another, more

basic sense. For instance, if you have nine people earning 200 CUP a

month, and only one person earning 3000 CUP, your average would be 480

CUP, an acceptable figure which conceals a significant disparity within

the group.



The statistical figure that would have offered us truly revealing data

is not the "average" but the "mean", which reflects the variable which

occupies the central position in a series of organized data, or, in

other words, the figure around which the greatest number of values tend

to cluster.



In the previous example, the mean would be, accurately enough, 200 CUP –

useful information, if we're at all interested in knowing the real wages

of Cubans.



Disparities Within Classes



A computer expert employed by a municipal office of the Ministry of

Culture, earning a monthly salary of 345 CUP, would fall under the

category of "Garbage collection, social and personal services." The

question is: who else would fall under that category? Performers who

make 35,000 CUP for a single concert?



We come across a similar situation in other sectors, such as Public

Health. A little over 80 percent of the employees at a State workplace

in Havana (whose name I will not reveal) earns a lower-than-average

salary, while the salary of the top-earning manager is 3.3 times that of

the lowest-earning employee.



That individuals holding bureaucratic, non-productive positions should

earn the highest wages at State companies is not uncommon. Such are the

historical distortions of Cuba's labor system which, in this particular

regard, is no different than any private enterprise system around the world.



A substantial wage increase for Cuba's science and technology sector

(3,000 CUP, on average) was recently announced. This is the result of

structural changes taking place within State institutions that have been

transformed into "companies."



What Cuba's average monthly salary of 466 CUP probably conceals is that

fact that there are a handful of people earning huge amounts of money

while the immense majority is being paid miserable wages. This is

something that Raul Castro himself had to acknowledge some years ago,

when he stated that such salaries aren't even enough to guarantee daily

subsistence.



Not long ago, Vice-President Marino Murillo declared, before Parliament,

that the administrative barriers in the way of wage payments would be

eliminated next year, provided companies had the profits to pay such

unregulated salaries.



So, what will become of subsidized Cuban entities that have no

"profits", such as cultural, health, garbage collection and education

entities? It is reasonable to suspect that a less than decorous plan is

in store for these, though this, of course, isn't being announced.



These institutions, however, are precisely those that have earned the

Cuban revolution such a "noble" image at the international level. They

are also the areas referred to as "achievements of the revolution"

during the recent debates surrounding the Party's new Guidelines, when

we were told cutbacks would be made in other sectors of the economy in

order to maintain these.



The fact of the matter, however, is that these sectors show suspicious

signs of stagnation, with the possible exception of medical services

rendered abroad, while more and more conditions for the expansion of

private enterprise are being slowly developed (even though officials

insist that the "socialist enterprise" will be the most prevalent within

the country's economic system).



The statistics office also reports that the average salary has been on

the rise in recent years.



This information, however, is also misleading, owing to the fact that

this rise in wages has been accompanied by a surreptitious rise in the

price of basic products such as soap, cooking oil, rice, toilet paper,

beans and others, and the elimination of a number of subsidized products.



This entails, of course, a drop in the purchasing power of the CUP

which, in practice, means a drop in the salary earned by workers, who

are the victims of these fluctuations, wholly at the mercy of the State.



Source: "A look at the "average" salary paid to Cubans" -

http://www.havanatimes.org/?p=97506