Before you ask, it is €505 a month and the percentage of workers on what many agree is barely enough to live on has risen by 73.6% between the Troika's arrival and the time its team left town.
The saddening figures are to be found deep within the latest bulletin from the Ministry of the Economy which reveals that the average monthly earnings for Portugal’s workers has fallen as many more get by on the minimum wage.
In October 2011, 11.3% of workers received the national minimum wage which then was just €485.
The largest increase was between April and October last year. In just seven months the percentage of workers earning the minimum wage rose from 13.2% to 19.6%.
With ever increasing water, electricity and other living costs, one in five workers must get by on the bare minimum which sadly is preferable to not having a job at all.
Portugal's overseers in Europe will be pleased that Portugal is keeping its costs of production low to encourage export competitiveness but the misery of many workers, unable to move to better jobs in a period of nationally high unemployment, may be expressed in their voting choices in the autumn election.
Comments
A far more relevant statistic - if Portuguese statistics can be relied upon (!) - is how many employees are declared by their employers to be being paid within say 150% of the minimum wage. So still only on 760 euros a month - which is still a struggle.
Malta's minimum is around this amount. France's 300% more than Portugal's and Luxembourg 400% more !!
Questioning Portuguese economic statistics was / is a common feature of the Troika and OECD reports. Knowing how much the data, if it existed, was intentionally skewed. For example - as a data set, you look in vain for meaningful analysis by racial type and origin.
Why show the world your dirty washing?
You seem to equate Portugal with Portugal's VIP elite. Two different things entirely.
Having joined the EU, Portugal's VIP elite foolishly positioned the countries workforce as the 'chinese cooly peasants of Europe'. Lowest possible pay and minimal observance of workers rights or labour laws. As today.
But an influx of rich north European retirees and those settlers foolishly intending to better themselves allowed rich pickings for the gangsters 'fleecing' the newcomers.
Whether by frauds to do with property purchase or development; dishonesty with supplying goods and services; outright failure by the public administration.
But now far poorer countries have joined the EU. Who actually see getting subsidy benefits from Portugal, without doing any work or working within the shadows, as being X2 their own minimum wage. So aspirational.
We now know a great many Portuguese businesses closed in the last few years (temporarily?) without any arrangements in place for their workforce to claim unemployment benefits. In many cases the worker was never even officially 'on the books' or had been deducted for social security but nothing actually registered to them. The owner then months late paying wages and closing suddenly - paying no redundancy. Then reforming a year or so later with new family members as owners and with government grants.
Portugal - for those wanting a better European Union, a total failure at every level !