The “Qalamro Rafah” website reported that the minimum wages of employed and retired workers have remained fixed over time, but the costs of basic living have taken on an upward trend in recent months; a rise that has been unprecedented in recent years.

Citing official data from Iran’s Statistical Center, the site wrote that point-to-point food inflation in Mordad (August) was estimated at about 130 percent, adding that food items have the largest share in the purchasing basket of working families, especially unskilled and minimum-wage workers.

Based on these data, with the increase in the prices of food items over the past year, the gap between wages and the livelihood basket has deepened in an unprecedented way.

Qalamro Rafah, citing Feramars Tofighi, a former member of the Wage Committee of the Supreme Labor Council, wrote that the livelihood basket in Tir (July) of this year was about 90 million tomans.

According to him, the rise in inflation—especially in basic food items—in the first few months of the year pushed things to the point where by the end of Tir, the cost of households’ food and beverage basket became about 10 million tomans more than the take-home pay of a married minimum-wage worker with one child.