Minimum wage worldwide: where can you live off the minimum wage?

Picodi South Africa analyst team checked how the minimum wage changed in 67 countries, how prices of basic groceries increased and how the cost of a “survival basket” compares to the minimum wage.

In the report, we use net wages, which employees take home. We find such a comparison more fair, as the difference between gross and net pay, depending on the country, can be as high as 30%.

In most countries in our ranking (58 out of 67), the minimum wage, compared to the January 2023 wage, has changed.

The lowest rises were given to workers in France (3.4%), Germany (2.8%) and Thailand (2.5%), while in countries such as Spain, Malaysia or Vietnam, governments have frozen the minimum wage or have not yet decided on the increase.

The highest increase in the minimum wage can be found in Argentina (↑138%) and Türkiye (↑100%), although this is caused by the huge inflation in those countries.

South Africa ranked 44th in the ranking: the minimum net wage is R 4,353, which is 9.4% more than last year (R 3,979 net).

Survival basket: by how much have basic food products become more expensive?

For this study, we created a basic grocery basket consisting of 8 groups of products: bread, milk, eggs, rice, cheese, meat, fruits and vegetables. This list of products is more than modest, nevertheless, these products in the given quantities can meet the minimum nutrient requirements of an average adult for a month.

• Milk (10 litres) – R 187
• Bread (10 loaves, 500 g each) – R 168
• Rice (1.5 kg) – R 39
• Eggs (20 pcs.) – R 61
• Cheese (1 kg) – R 127
• Poultry and beef (6 kg) – R 595
• Fruits (6 kg) – R 147
• Vegetables (8 kg) – R 179

The total cost of the “survival basket” at the beginning of 2024 is R 1,503 (6.07% more than last year). This amount represents 34.5% of the net minimum wage, while at the beginning of last year, it was 35.6% of the minimum wage. This means that the increase in South African minimum wage kept up with the rise of food prices.

In which country will you (not) survive on minimum wage?

People have different food preferences and different perceptions of comfortable living. Nonetheless, we decided to compare the cost of the basic grocery basket in all the studied countries and juxtapose it with the minimum wage in each country.

The most comfortable ratio of the grocery basket to the minimum wage can be found in the United Kingdom, Ireland, the Netherlands, Luxembourg and New Zealand. In these countries, workers spend less than ⅒ of the local minimum wage on basic groceries.

South Africa is far behind those countries – in our country the survival basket accounts for 34.5% of the minimum wage (49th place out of possible 67). In this regard, South Africa ranks higher than countries such as Mexico (35%), Brazil (37.1%), Ukraine (49.3%) and India (58.5%).

There are also countries, where even such a modest set of products consumes more than half of the minimum wage. These include Kazakhstan (54%), India (58.5%), Vietnam (65.6%) and Armenia (74.6%). In Nigeria, the minimum wage is not enough to cover even such a basic set of groceries.

Methodology

In this study, we compared the monthly minimum wages for full-time work effective January 2024 with the wages from the beginning of the last year. These rates come from official government websites, relevant ministries or committees as of January 8th, 2024. We have omitted countries, in which the minimum wage is negotiated by individual trade unions and countries without a statutory minimum wage (Switzerland, Italy, Singapore and northern European countries). For countries, where the minimum wage varies from region to region (USA, Canada, Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam), we have calculated and used the arithmetic mean of all regions. Net wages were obtained through salary calculators.

The grocery basket used in this study is a contractual basket of food products, created only for statistical purposes. The amounts given were calculated based on the recommendations of some of the health ministries regarding the minimum standards of food consumption. The product prices were taken from numbeo.com, where consumers from around the world monitor the prices of food, as well as other products and services.

For currency conversion, we used the average exchange rate data from Google Finance for the fourth quarter of 2023.

A spreadsheet with all the data used in the report can be found here.

Public use

Both the infographics as well as the statistical data can be used freely for commercial and non-commercial purposes. We only ask you to credit the research author (Picodi.com) with a link to this subpage. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at research@picodi.com.