Minimum wage remains stagnant and is equivalent to 43% of the average Brazilian salary.

247 - The Bolsonaro government and economists seem to suffer from the same semantic disease that afflicts ultraliberalism: both believe that increasing the minimum wage harms the economy and the fiscal deficit. The lack of imagination doesn't stop there. It is said, with complete nonchalance, that each real above inflation in the minimum wage produces a "cost" of R$ 350 million per year in government spending. It is this logic that has brought the minimum wage to its current insignificance, similar to the FHC era: it has stagnated at 43% of the average Brazilian salary. 

The Valor newspaper report This leaves no doubt about the automatic alignment of the economic editorial content of Brazilian newsrooms with the far-right government of Jair Bolsonaro. This explains the relative satisfaction of the market (and the stock exchange) with the new government: "andIn its final year of implementation, the minimum wage increase policy appears to have reached its limit in raising the purchasing power of the population whose income is tied to it. From at least three different perspectives, the comparison between the minimum wage and other income measures has remained relatively stagnant over the last three years. According to economists, this is an additional argument for the new government to change the minimum wage adjustment rule. The main argument is the fiscal impact: the national minimum wage is a reference for almost 70% of Social Security beneficiaries, the largest primary spending item of the federal government. Itaú estimates that for every R$1 increase above inflation, there is an additional cost of R$350 million each year, of an irreversible nature. Thus, over a ten-year period, each real percentage point increase in the minimum wage generates an additional 0,4 percentage point of primary deficit.

The article continues its argumentative agony, even though it is based on factual grounds: "after the nominal adjustment of 4,61% over 2018, the national minimum wage became R$ 998 as of January, equivalent to 43,3% of the average income across the country. The calculations were made by the Brazilian Institute of Economics of the Getulio Vargas Foundation (Ibre-FGV), at the request of Valor, based on the entity's estimate for the evolution of the real income of employed people this year." In 2018, this proportion remained practically the same, at 43,2%, also considering the institute's projection for the variation in the average income of workers last year. The percentage is very similar to that of 2016 and 2017, when the national minimum wage was equivalent to 43,9% and 44,2% of the average income, respectively."