Wage inequalities still dominate in Poland
23:36
Poles earn more on average than Czechs, Hungarians, and Portuguese, but we have much higher inequalities. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Poland is in third place among its members in terms of the percentage of employees earning less than 2/3 of the median salary in a given country.
Our result is exactly 21.1 percent. A higher percentage was recorded only in the United States (23.4 percent of US workers earn less than 2/3 of the median wage) and Israel (22.4 percent). The average result for the entire OECD is 15.3 percent.
In Poland, according to the latest data of the Central Statistical Office for 2019, the median is PLN 3,000 net, so 2/3 of it is PLN 2010 net. Wages below 2/3 of the median wage define the group of low-income workers according to the OECD.
There is also good information: Poles earned on average almost $32,000 per year (measured in purchasing power parity) in 2019. This gives us the highest position in the group of countries with the lowest salaries.
But there is no need to exaggerate these positives because it is still quite significantly below the average for the entire block. This is the highest result in the tail – higher than in most countries in our region, which dominate the bottom of the ranking. We are ahead of Estonia ($30,300 a year), the Czech Republic ($29,200 a year), as well as Lithuania, Latvia, Greece, Chile, Portugal, Hungary, Slovakia, and Mexico.
