According to a report by ECO, the Government will propose an increase in the Guaranteed Minimum Monthly Wage (RMMG) to 860 euros next year. The increase in the minimum wage of around 4.9% — above the Government's forecast for nominal economic growth, of around 4.5% — will be discussed with the employers' confederations and trade unions at the Social Concertation meeting scheduled for this Wednesday, September 11.

The income agreement signed by António Costa's government with the employers' confederations and the UGT in 2022 provided that the minimum wage to be applied in 2025 would be 855 euros. However, the current government believes that there is room to go further, and is therefore proposing an increase of 40 euros (from the current 820 euros to 860 euros), instead of the already agreed increase of 35 euros.

For now, among the workers' representatives, the CGTP has already made it clear that it demands that the minimum wage reach €1,000 next year, to cope with the "sharp increase in the cost of living", while the UGT indicated that there is room to reach €890, in an interview with Jornal de Negócios and Antena 1.

The promise of a minimum wage of one thousand euros was made by Luís Montenegro during the election campaign and would later be included in the Government's own program, as one of the measures aimed at creating a country that “values ​​work”. It also follows on from the successive increases that have been made in recent years. After being frozen for several years, the Guaranteed Minimum Monthly Wage rose to 505 euros in October 2015 and, since then, it has not stopped growing (not even during the years of the pandemic).

For example, in 2020, it went from 600 euros to 635 euros. In 2021, from 635 euros to 705 euros. And in 2022, from 705 euros to 760 euros. As for 2023, an increase from 50 euros to 810 euros was planned, but António Costa's government decided to go further and introduced the “largest ever increase in the minimum wage”: from 60 euros to the current 820 euros, that is, an increase of 7.9%. It should be noted, however, that workers who receive the minimum wage have to pay 11% of the Single Social Tax (TSU), that is, in 2024, this corresponds to a net salary of 729.80 euros per month.

Despite these successive increases, a recent analysis by the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions showed that those who receive the guaranteed minimum wage continue to have serious difficulties in paying the bills at the end of the month. Almost three in ten of these Portuguese people admit that it is challenging to balance the family budget, a situation that has been worsened by the high inflation of recent years.

Worse still, Portugal is among the European countries where the situation of these workers has worsened due to high inflation, along with Bulgaria, Spain and the Netherlands, for example.