translated from Spanish: Middle class: 11 million salaried workers

CENDA reviews the statistics of workers in Chile every month. From their individual tokens in the pension systems, they identify them with RUT, first and last name. They show how many are, their gender and age, how many found work and how many lost it, what activities and regions they perform in, their taxable wages and the contributions they were deducted from them, how much their pension went up, who paid it, how they financed it, and who financed it, and who was funded appropriated surplus contributions after paying his pensions. With this data, the Monthly Internal Economic Activity Indexes, IMACEI-CENDA, are updated, from which the figures mentioned in the following are obtained.
Chile’s workers are now fourteen million people, almost the entire population of the country over the age of 16. Three million are retired, half for AFP, and two-thirds are women. They survive on miserable pensions.
Just under eleven million workers are in full activity. Their number has doubled in the last quarter century and they grow by a quarter of a million per year. They are very young, two-thirds are under 46 years of age and 42 percent are under 36. Just under half are women. 
They are consistently hired and dismissed from six million precarious salaried jobs. In the meantime they work at a fee, on their own or remain in the cessation. At the back of a few years almost all eleven million assets have been listed as wage earners. 
Such salaried jobs grow at an even faster rate than the number of active workers. Although they fluctuate constantly, following the avatars of the economic cycle in a perfect fit. In the last quarter century, their numbers have more than doubled, rising from less than three to six million, raising their share from 30 to 42 percent of the population over the age of 16. Wage-earner jobs are less, but they already add up to three-quarters of those occupied by men and account for most of the total growth. They have doubled their share, rising from 18 to 35 percent of the female population over the age of 16 over the same period.
The taxable remuneration of AFP contributors has also moderately grown to an average of 810 thousand pesos per person in May 2019. Half, however, earnless than 600,000 pesos, including a quarter of a million that earns the minimum or less. At the other end, 400,000 people are trading for the taxable cap of 2.2 million pesos per month, i.e. they earn that or more. Almost all of these are also employed workers who perform skilled professional duties. Taxable pay for women reached 88 per cent of men’s in April 2019. It is noteworthy that, while that proportion has risen by about ten percentage points in the last quarter century, it has stalled since the middle of the last decade.
Less than half of the salaried jobs are engaged in the production of goods and services sold in the market, including industry, construction, transportation, education, health, professional services and food, among others. Including eight per cent working in productive activities related to natural resources, including agriculture, forestry, fisheries and 1.7 per cent that works directly in mining. However, the latter sectors generate almost all exports and most of the profits and business incomes, demonstrating the rentist distortion of the Chilean economy. 
More than half of wage jobs are in sectors that add little and no value. Like commerce, it is the main employer, finance and personal and social services. About 8 percent work in the public administration, an industry in which suggestively these statistics include AFP employees. 
Those who work in low-value aggregation sectors are therefore their lobbying capacity diminished. However, most of the workers who work there, such as trade and finance, for example, make it possible to value the huge private capital invested there. They are thus as productive for the capital that exploits them, as those working in industry or transport.
In lengthy and exhausting days, salaried workers generate almost all the wealth produced in the country that, in addition to the wealth they produce when they work on their own or at fees, and the income transferred from other countries to resource exporters are aggregated into gross domestic product (GDP). 
However, the mass of taxable remuneration does not reach one third of the taxable remuneration. Although this share is growing steadily due to the rapid increase in the and more moderate numbers of pay, it is still a long way from that obtained by workers in developed countries, where the wage mass usually equates to two-thirds of GDP . This demonstrates the very high rate of exploitation suffered by workers in Chile.
In addition, their salaries are cut with planned contributions and educational collections, which for the most part are immediately diverted into the pockets of large private entrepreneurs. These should fully finance both the national savings to which contributions are supposedly diverted, as well as educational expenditure, from the earnings and income stakes that are appropriated, which exceed half of GDP. If usury interest in consumer credit is added, these three main forms of super-exploitation cut more than a third of taxable wages. An important part of the health quotes of skilled workers also end up in ISAPRE pockets. 
These wage cuts, which are now intended to make it even more onerous, constitute super-exploitation of work that significantly aggravates the outrageous inequity of Chilean society. 
The eleven million salaried workers are the largest and most important social and economic force in Chile. It is the modern face of the people in Chile. Far from the caricature painted by his adversaries, of an amorphous mass of individuals only concerned with consumption who are contemptuously of “middle class”.

The content poured into this opinion column is the sole responsibility of its author, and does not necessarily reflect the editorial line or position of El Mostrador.

Original source in Spanish

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