One in five employed in Poland has low wages: OECD
15:12
Almost 19 percent of employees in Poland have low wages, according to data published by experts of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
For the OECD, the measure of low wage levels is two-thirds of the so-called median wages. The median is the middle value of some range of values that remains after removing the outliers. In the case of earnings, it is a better indicator than the average wage, which may be overstated by the high earnings of even a small group of working people.
It is difficult to find up-to-date data on the median wage. For example, the Polish Central Statistical Office publishes them every two years. Most recently it did it in November last year and these were the data for 2020. According to them, the median earnings in Poland were then PLN 4,702.66 gross.
The median is a value that divides Poles exactly in half in terms of pay. In simplified terms, it can be said that 50 percent above this amount earns well, and 50 percent – poorly. For the OECD, really small wages are two-thirds of the median or less. According to the organization's calculations, there were 18.8 percent of those employed with so little income in Poland in 2020. In terms of the percentage of low wages, Poland was ninth out of the 40 compared labor markets. Moreover, the Polish result is above the OECD average, which is less than 14 percent.
