The fall of the bolivar turns the Venezuelan minimum wage into charity
Set at 130 bolivars since 2022, the Venezuelan minimum wage reached the value of a single dollar in August, due to the fall of the national currency caused by US sanctions. Unions denounce this as “an attack on human dignity.”
The minimum wage in Venezuela, set at 130 bolivars since 2022, has reached the value of one dollar, according to the official exchange rate set on August 7 by the Central Bank of Venezuela: 130.06 bolivars. An “attack on human dignity,” denounces the National Committee of Workers in Struggle (CNCTL), quoted by the media outlet Efecto Cocuyo , as this sum is far from enough to live on. The cost of a basic food basket is around $500.
The collapse of the bolivar – which lost half its value against the dollar by 2025, according to Infobae – appears to be the first consequence of the US sanctions on Venezuelan oil put in place in 2025 by Donald Trump – the latest in a long series of sanctions inaugurated in 2017, during his first term. It is accompanied by rampant inflation, estimated in May at 229% over one year by the Venezuelan Financial Observatory, an organization independent of the government, cited by Bloomberg .
Enough to raise fears of the worst in a country where 86% of the population was already living below the poverty line in 2024, after ten years of a crisis that caused the exodus of 7.7 million people (out of a total population of 29 million), specifies the newspaper El Nacional .
Accused of having been fraudulently re-elected in 2024, President Nicolás Maduro, heir to socialist leader Hugo Chávez (1999-2013), has undertaken a liberalization of the economy in recent years, establishing a de facto two-tier society with private sector employees paid in dollars and civil servants and retirees paid in bolivars.
The Chavista government, which views the sanctions as part of an "economic war" waged by Washington, supplements the minimum wage with vouchers worth up to $160. The symbolism is nonetheless disastrous, the CNCTL laments:
“Just one dollar a month for those whose efforts support public services, national production, education, health, and all aspects of daily life. This amount is not just insufficient; it is institutionalized humiliation.”
Courrier International
