The trade union consumer basket for October 2025, whose value reached 3,312.40 KM, has once again exposed the reality in which the average citizen lives.
While prices rise month after month, incomes remain buried. The average salary in FBiH paid in August, in the amount of 1,595 KM, covers only 48 percent of the living expenses of a family – that is, less than half of what is needed to survive, not to live.
Even more devastating is the fact that the minimum wage of 1,000 KM covers only 30 percent of the union consumer basket. How to survive on a third of what is needed for basic life needs? The answer is known to every family in this country – loans, debts, waivers, trips abroad.
The biggest burden, as expected, falls on food – 43 percent of total costs. This means that almost half of the average worker’s monthly income goes to basic subsistence: bread, milk, oil, meat, vegetables. Energetics, housing and communal services account for an additional 14.86 percent, while hygiene and health, even in the minimal version of almost ten calculated items, take another tenth of the budget.
What should be a right, not a luxury – education, culture, clothes, shoes – has been pushed to the margins of everyday life. School textbooks, transportation, shoes for children – all this is becoming an increasingly heavy burden, even though children are the reason why many parents stay in this country and despite everything try to build a normal life.
These are not statistics. This is the monthly agony of thousands of families. The question arises, when will the standard of citizens finally begin an upward trajectory?
Because a country where a worker cannot feed his family is not socially just. And the society that normalizes it becomes a society of departures, not of stays, he writes Avaz.
