The Evidence in Our Annual Ritual
Minimum wages in the Philippines adjust constantly, but unevenly. There is no single national date. Each region’s wage board issues orders, often yearly, sometimes in two tranches spilling into the next year. NCR approved a ₱50 hike. Calabarzon used staggered increases. Western Visayas, Central Visayas, and Northern Mindanao followed with their own adjustments extending into 2026.
On the government side, salary grades climb under Salary Standardization Law VI, implemented through scheduled tranches every January from 2024 to 2027.
We are constantly updating pay. Yet people still feel poor, anxious, and tired. Policy reacts quickly to wages but slowly to affordability. Household spending on food, transport, housing, and energy keeps climbing, often outpacing income gains for ordinary families.
We fix the number on the payslip, but not the price of living.
The Fair Counterpoint: Pay Still Matters
Higher wages matter. Without them, workers drown. Labor unions are right to demand dignity. Nobody survives on moral lectures about productivity.
But dignity collapses if prices eat it alive. Raise wages without lowering living costs, and small employers strain, MSMEs get squeezed, and workers still chase inflation instead of stability. Wage justice matters. But affordability justice matters just as much.
Make Life Cheaper, Not Just Pay Bigger
Here is the uncomfortable truth: the real cure to our salary madness is not only higher pay. It is making daily life manageable again—so power bills do not shock, jeepney fares do not sting, rent does not choke, and food stays on the table.
That means treating affordability as infrastructure: cheaper and reliable energy, efficient transport and logistics, productive agriculture, fair competition, and real action against monopolies. When living becomes affordable, wage pressure relaxes naturally. Employers breathe. Workers stabilize. Productivity finally matters because survival stops consuming every peso of the paycheck.
Instead of asking only, “How much should people earn?” we must also ask, “Why does it cost so much just to exist?”
Beyond the Paycheck: A Call to Rethink
Magkano ba ang sapat? The honest answer is not really the number. It is the system.
Policymakers must stop treating wage hikes as the main cure and start treating affordability as national infrastructure. Employers must support reforms that break cost bottlenecks, not just resist salary petitions. Workers must demand from government not only higher pay, but cheaper living.
Because a country that only raises wages without lowering costs is like pouring water into a leaking bucket. It feels good for a moment. Then you look again.
And you are still thirsty.
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Columnist Bio
Nicasio A. Pimentel III is a UK-certified human resources practitioner and educator with over 16 years of experience spanning HR strategy, analytics, systems integration and talent management across several Fortune Global 500 companies and public sector institutions in UK, Australia and the Middle East. He holds an MSc in Management and Human Resources from the prestigious London School of Economics and a BA Psychology from the University of the Philippines Diliman. A former Christian missionary to marginalized ethnic minorities in Cambodia, he now teaches psychology at the University of Antique and continues to serve underserved communities in Western Visayas through grassroots ministry and education advocacy. He is also an Associate Member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (Assoc CIPD) in the UK. For questions, e-mail nicasio.pimentel@antiquespride.edu.ph./PN
