How high is the minimum wage actually?
Every employee in the Netherlands aged 21 or older is entitled to the statutory minimum wage. This is the minimum amount you must receive when you work. The minimum wage is now 12.79 euros gross per hour.
According to the latest figures, 439,000 people have (CBS, figure from 2022) a minimum wage. Half of them are younger than 25 years old.
Is that a lot compared to the rest?
If you compare it with neighboring countries, we are in the middle of the pack in terms of minimum wages, says economics professor Alfred Kleinknecht. “In Switzerland the amount is twice as high, but if you compare our minimum with Eastern Europe, we are a lot higher again.”
What do politicians want?
A parliamentary majority (GroenLinks-PvdA, ChristenUnie, PvdD, DENK, PVV VOLT and Den Haan) wants to increase the statutory minimum wage by 1.7 percent, on top of the increase that was already planned from January. The minimum wage would already increase in January from 12.79 to 13.27 euros per hour. The House motion adds another 22 cents.
However, not everyone is happy with it. Like the VVD. The liberals now prefer to make a different choice and want more money for middle incomes. And employers are also against it.
What’s up with that?
First of all, because the minimum wage is linked to benefits. So: if the minimum wage goes up, the benefits (social assistance benefit and the AOW) will also automatically rise. Kleinknecht: “It is arranged in our country that benefits are linked to the minimum wage. This makes it a very drastic measure.”
Employers’ organization VNO-NCW is against an increase. “They argue that an increase in the minimum wage has consequences for companies. They lose more money because labor becomes more expensive. And the result would be that companies pass the costs on to their products. But if companies cannot cope with this, they would they could reduce their employment. Or worse: go bankrupt.”
Kleinknecht also has serious doubts about these concerns. “Several current scientific studies have shown that the impact on employment is quite small. Or even not at all.”
What are the advantages?
There are also advantages. First of all, of course, for all those people who depend on the minimum wage. Think of low-skilled people or young people; This quickly amounts to a group of more than 400,000 people.
“And you create a cleaning effect. The poorer companies at the bottom of the market will have to revise their business model, improve their quality, modernize or else just fold. A higher minimum wage therefore increases the quality of entrepreneurship.”
Sectors with relatively many minimum wage jobs
-Package deliverers
-Catering staff
-Asparagus pickers, strawberry pickers and other agricultural workers
-Factory employees
-Luggage handlers at airports.
2023-09-21 21:17:37
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