Written by: Economist Idris Al-Sharif<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is often said that the wage bill is \u201cinflated,\u201d especially since it consumes more than 40% of public spending in a country where roughly one-third of the population receives income from the state treasury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There is no doubt that the significant growth in public consumption spending at the expense of investment spending\u2014and the negative effects this causes on the economy\u2014reflects a structural economic imbalance that must be addressed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, claiming that its value has increased requires some clarification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In nominal terms, yes.
The wage bill rose from about 19 billion dinars in 2015 to around 73 billion dinars in 2025\u2014nearly four times higher. This increase is due to two factors: expanded public employment and salary increases across many categories at varying rates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But in terms of the real value of the wage bill, the picture is completely different.
When these figures are converted into US dollars (which account for about 97% of the budget\u2019s revenues), we find that in 2015 the wage bill was equivalent to about $14 billion, while in 2025 it was only around $11 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This means that the actual value of the total wage bill has declined by more than 20% due to the depreciation of the official exchange rate of the dinar and the erosion of purchasing power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In other words,
the state is paying more dinars today, but in reality it is paying less in terms of purchasing power or dollars.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the expansion in public employment, the average real individual income has significantly declined as the dinar has lost more than 80% of its purchasing power over the period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To partially compensate for this and help households cope with the sharp decline in real income, it is proposed to increase allowances for wives and children\u2014at least within the amount saved in dollar terms between the two periods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is also necessary to implement previously issued decisions regarding university student grants, for which funds had been allocated in past years but were unfortunately spent on other purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Written by: Economist Idris Al-Sharif It is often said that the wage bill is \u201cinflated,\u201d especially since it consumes more than 40% of public spending in a country where roughly one-third of the population receives income from the state treasury. There is no doubt that the significant growth in public consumption spending at the expense […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":256876,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[683],"tags":[926,613],"class_list":["post-256875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economic-articles","tag-inflation","tag-libya"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256877,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256875\/revisions\/256877"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sada.ly\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}