Trinidad and Tobago is raising their minimum wage, so how does it compare to Jamaica’s?

Trinidad’s finance minister just tabled the country’s budget for financial year 2023/2024.  One of the key takeaways was the Government’s plan to raise the minimum wage.

The government plans to raise the minimum wage by 17%, from TT$17.50 cents to TT$20.50 cents per hour.  So the new minimum wage is about US$3, or J$472.

How does that compare?  In Jamaican dollar terms, that’s $18,880 dollars per week.  Jamaica’s weekly minimum wage, which was also raised this year, is J$13,000.

Trinidad’s Finance Minister, Colm Imbert said the increase will benefit approximately 190,000 Trini workers. But there will need to be an amendment to the country’s Minimum Wages Act before the increase can go into effect. 

The increase is expected to take effect on January 1, 2024. 

FYI – Trinidad’s financial year begins on October 1, as opposed to our financial year which begins on April 1.

The minimum wage increase comes as Trinidad’s inflation peaked at over 8% in January. It fell to about 6% in August, but that still means that things are 6% more expensive than they were last year.

Plus we know that inflation has a lagging effect, which means people are just now feeling the 8% inflation from January. 

And the country is also experiencing a US dollar foreign exchange crunch. The demand for US dollars is so great that the banks can’t keep up, and that’s putting pressure on the country’s exchange rate. I talked about the impact of that in another video.

On the plus side, the country’s unemployment levels have been improving. According to the Government, unemployment was at 3.7% as of June, down from 4.7% at the end of 2022.

So hopefully this minimum wage increase will be helpful.

And that’s the bottom line.