Once again, the INE gives us the headline that the Broad Front and its media spokespersons are going to repeat to the point of exhaustion: “The average wage grew 3.22% in January and the real wage rose 2.28% per month”. Sounds nice, right? It seems that the Uruguayan worker is suddenly gaining purchasing power. But when you look at the numbers with a magnifying glass and without anesthesia, the reality is brutally different: this rise is a farce financed with foreign money and paid, sooner or later, by
the productive private sector.
According to fresh data from the National Institute of Statistics, published on February 27, 2026, the general Average Wage Index registered a monthly variation of 3.22%, which coincides with that accumulated in the year, while in the last 12 months it accumulated an increase of 5.24%. The public sector showed a nominal increase of 4.13% per month, which translates into a real 3.18%, while the private sector barely reached a nominal 2.72% and a
real 1.79%.
The Average Real Wage Index rose 2.28% in the month, almost entirely driven by the contribution of the public sector, and the Average Nominal Wage Index grew 3.08% monthly and 5.31% year-on-year, which is used to adjust liabilities.
With a year-on-year
Advertisement ratio of around 3.46% over the last 12 months, the real wage year-on-year stands at a modest 1.72%. The national average of 3.22% is a pure arithmetic deception: the sector that does not generate net wealth, that lives exclusively on fiscal coercion, issuance and debt, is the one that pulls the car hard, while the sector that does create value — the private sector
— grows considerably less.
Within the public sector, the increase of 4.13% is mainly explained by adjustments in the Central Government, which has the strongest impact, followed by Public Companies with a contribution of 1.10% and Departmental Governments with 0.31%. In the private sector, 2.72% comes mainly from manufacturing industries with an incidence of 0.65%, wholesale and retail trade together with vehicle repair with 0.54%, and social and health services with 0.51%. The INE report itself recognizes this between the lines, pointing out that the lower cumulative variation in several divisions compared to the previous year responds to wage adjustments lower than those of the previous period and to the delay in signing the minutes of the new round of the Wage Councils. In other words, in the private sector, adjustments are more moderate because the market tries not to commit suicide with unsustainable increases, but the State forces the average
upwards. Advertisement
The Uruguayan public sector does not produce goods or services that people buy voluntarily in the market. Their increases come from three sources, all of them harmful: taxes extracted from the private sector—the same one that then sees their salaries grow less and burdens more tax—, monetary issuance that acts as a hidden tax and affects first those who are farthest from the stream of new money, so that public employees and state companies receive fresh pesos while retirees, private workers and savers arrive last, and future debt that tomorrow will be paid with more taxes or more inflation, and they already expect a rebound of the dollar in the first semester.
That is why the “real wage” celebrated by the Broad Front is an accounting illusion. It's as if I raised my salary by mortgaging my neighbor's house and then going on TV saying that “the economy grew”. Tomorrow, when inflation rebounds and so does the dollar, as they already anticipate, that assumed real 2.28% monthly or 1.72% year-on-year will evaporate rapidly. The private sector, meanwhile, will continue to bear the burden of a bureaucracy that continues to grow and consume resources
.
The Wage Councils, that corporatist relic that the Broad Front defends tooth and nail, do nothing more than rigidify the labor market and delay the necessary adjustments. 95% of the tables have already closed with an agreement, but conflicts persist in some sectors precisely because the market cannot do more without destroying employment or competitiveness
.
Clear conclusion without anesthesia: as long as the increase in real wages depends on the public sector and does so disproportionately — 3.18% real compared to 1.79% in the private sector — it is not a victory for the worker, it is a plunder of the productive worker. It's not “progress”, it's institutionalized parasitism. It's not “fair redistribution”, it's the typical front-end demagoguery that they've been selling us for decades.
The only real and sustainable wage increase will come when we free the private sector from the suffocating tax burden, endless regulation and manipulable fiat currency. Meanwhile, every time you read “State-driven rise in real wages”, translate: “we are getting more expensive for the mirage
”.
And as always, the bill arrives. It's only a matter of time.
