The average monthly salary in Cuba in 2025 was 6,930 Cuban pesos, equivalent to just 15 dollars at the average annual exchange rate, according to the official report published on Wednesday by the National Office of Statistics and Information (ONEI), which has been highlighted by economist Elías Amor in his weekly economics program on CiberCuba.
The document, titled Average Salary in Figures. Cuba 2025, confirms a reality that Amor summed up bluntly: "What can you buy with 15 dollars? If the salary is the price of labor, the fundamental problem in Cuba is that this salary is worthless," he said.
The economist detailed that the nominal salary grew by 18.7% compared to 2024, which amounts to an additional 1,091 pesos per month, a rate that strikingly contrasts with that of Europe, where increases rarely exceed 4% annually.
However, that spectacular growth in nominal terms fades in the light of a official inflation rate of 14.1% year-on-year in 2025, with peaks of 21.5% for food and 69.8% for alcoholic beverages.
Adjusted for inflation, the real purchasing power of Cubans increased by only 4% in the last year, which is the difference between the nominal rise of 18.7% and the inflation rate of 14.1%.
Elías Amor warns about the trap of that argument: "A leftist economist would immediately say: in Cuba, wages do not lose purchasing power," but that interpretation ignores that 15 dollars a month is insufficient to cover any basic needs," he added.
The economist brought to light the facts: the gap between salaries and the cost of living is staggering. He refers to the fact that a person needs more than 50,000 pesos per month to cover food, hygiene, medication, transportation, and basic services, which is more than seven times the average salary of 6,930 pesos.
As of the informal exchange rate in April 2026, which is around 523 pesos per dollar, that average salary amounts to just five dollars a month, and a newly graduated doctor earns about ten dollars.
The sectoral inequalities worsen the outlook: the business sector paid an average of 7,120 pesos in 2025, 22.2% more than the previous year, while the budgeted sector, which includes health and education, barely reached 5,850 pesos, with an increase of 6.3%.
The minimum wage remains at 2,100 pesos, which is equivalent to about five dollars at the official exchange rate, a figure that the ONEI report itself frames within what it describes as "a moment of particular economic weakness, close to a humanitarian crisis."
For Amor, the underlying problem is structural: "The regime systematically undervalues the worth of wages and the conditions that must be respected according to the demands of the labor market, and that’s how it goes for our poor island."
The economist argues that in the Cuban communist system, the salary loses its essential economic function of balancing the supply and demand for labor, which leads to demotivation, low productivity, and massive labor exodus.
This deterioration reached its turning point in January 2021, when the regime implemented the so-called "Tarea Ordenamiento", a monetary reform that unified the dual currency system and nominally increased salaries, but unleashed an inflationary spiral that eroded any real gains.
Since then, the cumulative inflation until 2025 increased by 206%, multiplying prices by more than five times, while wages did not grow even to half that rate, according to Amor's analysis.
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