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Friday, January 29th, 2016  |  USD: Buy 531.29 / Sell 543.92
20 years

Costa Rica’s “base salary,” used for calculating everything from court fines to child support, increases to ¢424,200

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January 5th, 2016 (ICR News) What is known in Costa Rica as a “base salary” and is used as a benchmark in determining everything from court fines to child support has been set at ¢424,200 for 2016.

 

The amount is based on the minimum monthly wage for an entry-level “office worker” in the public sector.  The figure is an increase of ¢20,800 from 2015, or about 5 percent.

 

While Costa Rica labor law defines dozens of different “minimum wages” depending upon type of employment, the “base salary” is used as a reference in determining everything from civil fines and penalties, child support, and even in determining if a robbery or theft is considered “aggravated.”

 

In the case of civil fines and penalties, many laws and codes refer to penalties in multiples of the base salary, e.g. “5 times the base salary, 10 times the base salary” and so on.

 

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  • Yeims

    I don’t believe this figure is very representative of the salaries of many workers; I bet the curve is quite biased and that the statics people used the mean average where the mode would have been more appropriate. That might explain the base salary being so high when most of the people I know earn much less than that.

    • http://insidecostarica.com/ Timothy Williams

      As the story states: “The amount is based on the minimum monthly wage for an entry-level “office worker” in the public sector.”

      This is in fact true, and published by the central government towards the end of November for the year ahead. The figure is the minimum monthly salary for an entry-level “office worker” — but note the “in the public sector” part. The government has its own list of minimum wages, which are different from those for the private sector and tend to be about 20 percent higher.

    • disgusted

      My friend works 6 days a week for a mini super bread store downtown Makes or brings home 152,500 every two weeks as a cashier. IF she makes an error she pays out of her salary. Not easy life here in CR compared to USA/Canada.

  • Ken Morris

    I’ve always wondered if the base salary is gross or net. If it’s gross, as I suspect, take home is–what?–around 13% less, and not quite as good.

    BTW, in an apples-to-apples comparison, I suspect Tim is right that government salaries are “only” about 20% higher than the private sector. For any real job requiring a high school diploma (which I assume the base salary government employees must have) it’s kind of tough to earn less than around $600 a month, and $800 seems more the norm. However, the average salary (median) is lower because of all the informal employment and the number of workers without high school diplomas.

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