Seventy-three percent of citizens earn below the average wage. Half of all employees take home between 24,000 and 36,000 denars a month. And the minimum consumer basket costs around 70,000 denars. The maths is brutal: half of all workers can't cover the basic cost of living even on two salaries.

The figures were laid out by Simona Cvetanovski, a member of SDSM's executive board, citing data from the Public Revenue Office for 2025. But set the party label aside - it's the numbers that speak here, and they come from an official state institution, not a party pamphlet.

When the „average wage“ becomes a statistical illusion that fewer than a third of citizens ever reach, the average stops meaning anything. It's dragged upward by a small number of high earners, while the majority live far below it. The average wage is great for headlines and international comparisons; for a household bringing in 30,000 denars, it's just a number on paper.

A minimum consumer basket of 70,000 denars against a wage of 36,000 denars isn't an abstraction - it's the maths every family does at the end of the month. Electricity, rent, food, medicine, kids. When the basic bill doesn't close even on two salaries, the gap gets covered with loans, with borrowing from relatives, or by giving up things once considered normal.

The opposition wants the minimum wage raised above 600 euros. The government will answer with its own numbers and its own percentages - that's how the game goes. But while the parties fight over who raised or wrecked how much, families across the country live with the same brutal arithmetic. And that arithmetic votes for no one.