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.

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.