According the data coming from the International Labor Organization (ILO), the indicator- Gross Domestic Product per worked hour in dollars, i.e. the productivity in Macedonia is about 34 dollars per worked hour (1,768.00 denars).

Macedonia, and above all the Macedonian workers, are productive above the world average (23.27 dollars). If calculated on a monthly basis (168 working hours), one worker is productive, i.e. creates 297.024,00 denars per month.

The net minimum wage in Macedonia is 24.379,00 denars per month, and one worker creates 297.024,00 denars per month.

This means that a worker with a minimum wage receives 17% of the value that on average is created monthly. Therefore and as the Federation of Trade Unions of Macedonia pointed out, the bosses and the officials want to keep workers in poverty, or in conclusion, the general value created is not distributed proportionally to labor, or the share of the wages in the value created is relatively low.

Only 17% of the value created goes to the wages, and the rest goes to profit, investments, depreciation, taxes, capital costs and other expenses.

It is obvious that the intention to prevent the growth of the minimum wage and the excuses to not increase the minimum wage are not about how productive Macedonian workers are or aren’t, but the main issue is about how rich they (bosses and officials) can be and how can they rule on the backs of the workers by keeping them with low wages.

Macedonia has productivity above the world average and there is economic space for wage growth, despite the fact that certain experts, bosses and officials want to convince the general public of the contrary.

In some countries in the region, it can be seen that their productivity is not much higher than in Macedonia, but their minimum wage is significantly higher.

The data also shows that Macedonian workers are not at the bottom when it comes to the productivity, on the contrary they have relatively good productivity that is close to Bulgaria for example, and higher productivity than Montenegro, Serbia, Bosnia and Albania, but despite our higher productivity compared to some countries, the minimum wage and wages in general in Macedonia are much lower compared to the same countries in the region.

As a conclusion to all this, we can clearly see that the employers exploit workers, and the government supports this situation.