A 70,000 basket against a 49,000 average wage: the arithmetic both sides use however it suits them

The opposition laid out the bill in four numbers. The consumer basket costs around 70,000 denars. The minimum wage is around 26,000 denars. The average wage is around 49,000 denars. A young person without their own home needs around 90,000 denars a month just for basic expenses.

That is an SDSM press release, and like every party press release it came with political baggage - accusations aimed at prime minister Hristijan Mickoski, comparisons involving watches and state aircraft, and a message that citizens will deliver their verdict at the ballot box.

The political rhetoric can be set aside. The arithmetic cannot.

If the basket is 70,000 denars and the average wage is 49,000, then the average worker does not cover basic consumption with their entire salary. If the minimum is 26,000, the gap is not a budgeting failure - it is a hole that a significant part of the population lives in. Two employed people on average wages reach 98,000 denars and barely cover the basket plus a little.

„There is no better statistic than the wallet and the fridge”, reads a line from the release. It is a party slogan, but it is not wrong about one thing: a Macedonian citizen feels the economy through prices, not through the growth rate.

The two sets of statistics never meet

On the other side are the messages about economic progress - high growth rates, increased wages and pensions, improved indicators. Those numbers are not invented either. The problem is that the two sets of statistics describe different things and are never placed next to each other in public debate.

Growth in gross domestic product and growth in the average wage can both be real and at the same time irrelevant to a household that feels the price of the basket faster than the rise in its income. Conversely, a party calculation produced for a press release is not an audit report.

What is missing is a third place to stand. An independent, regular, publicly available calculation of the consumer basket with a stated methodology, one that neither side can pick and choose according to need. Until that exists, every month will bring two opposing truths about the same country - and the citizen will keep believing the one printed on the receipt.