in-cyprus 13 January 2020 -Edited by Annie Charalambous
One in four employees in Cyprus receives a salary of less than €1,000 while half earn up to €1,500, according to Statistical Service data based on information provided by the Social Security Service.
The data also shows that since 2010 only a slight shift of employees from the lowest wage scales to the highest. For example, employees with salaries of up to €1,000 were 24.6% of the total in 2018, while in 2010 the figure stood at 25.5%.
In 2014, one year after Cyprus had come under an austerity adjustment programme, the percentage of employees with gross monthly earnings of up to € 1,000 were 27.2%. The category of employees with lowest earnings is also the most vulnerable one. And the group most likely to be at risk of poverty too.
What the data analysis also highlights is that employees with monthly gross earnings between €1,000 and €1,250 are on the rise. In 2010, only 14.6% of all employees were on this scale. In 2013, the year of the crisis, this stood at 14%.
Since 2014, more and more employees have had gross monthly earnings between €1,000 and €1,250. Gradually, the proportion reached 16.8% of all employees by 2018. However, wages in 2018 began to rise due to the re-introduction of part of cut wages and benefits as a result of the adjustment memorandum.
The situation is more stable in the group of employees with gross monthly earnings from €1,250 to € 1,500. There has been no significant employee shift since 2010, and it has remained at 11.3%.
Differentiation, albeit slightly upwards, is recorded for those with a gross salary of €1,500 to €1,750. The proportion of employees in this scale was 9.5%, while in 2015 it was 8.9%. Importantly, 16.1% of employees have a gross salary of € 1,750 to €2,500.
Nonetheless, the percentage is lower than in 2010 when 17.2% of employees were in that payroll bracket. More specifically, 6.2% of employees had gross monthly earnings of €1,750 to €2,000 in 2018, 5.7% of employees had gross pay of € 2,000 to € 2,250 and 4.2% of € 2,250 to € 2,500.
The percentage of higher-paid employees remains steady. In 2018, gross monthly remunerations from €2,500 to €2,750 were 3.9% of the total, 2.6% were getting between €2,750 and €3,000, 2.5% were getting between €3,000 and €3,250 and 1.9% from €3,250 up to €3,500.
Percentages for the most privileged employees remained steady since 2010 with 5.2% of them earning gross monthly salaries of €3,500 to € 4,500. In addition, 3% of employees have a gross monthly salary of €4,500 to €6,000. And 2.5% of total employees get over €6,000 monthly.
