With salaries unable to keep up with Inflation
HAVANA TIMES – On Saturday, October 10, the D’Ichín restaurant reopened under new private management, determined to make it once again the favorite destination for lovers of Chinese cuisine in Camagüey. Less than a week later, that goal already appears to be in jeopardy due to a shortage of workers.
Just three days after its reopening, several social media accounts began posting job openings on behalf of D’Ichín for positions as varied as servers, kitchen assistants, and cooks. Logic would suggest that all those positions should have been filled by the time the establishment reopened, but apparently that was not the case.
An attempt was made to contact D’Ichín’s management for this article, but no response had been received by the time of publication. More revealing were the comments left by social media users beneath the job postings on Facebook. Most criticized the low wages offered by the business’s new owners: a daily base pay of 900 pesos ($1.10 USD) per worker, plus additional compensation to be determined during the interview.
“No self-respecting cook would accept that pittance. Maybe someone desperate or some kid fresh out of the Culinary Association’s training courses. Otherwise, I can see the owners themselves having to wrestle with the pots and pans,” joked one user posting as “Anonymous Participant.” “I don’t know how a restaurant can expect to maintain quality standards when it can’t even fill essential positions,” questioned another user, Orestes Lahera.
Significantly, this is not an isolated case. Also in Camagüey, the Nü House bar and restaurant prides itself on its gourmet tapas and pizzas. Its prices reflect those ambitions: the bill for a meal for two rarely comes to less than 20,000 pesos (almost seven times Cuba’s legally established monthly minimum wage). One might assume that its clientele would be limited, but that is not the case. During business hours, it is common to see more than a dozen cars and motorcycles parked nearby, while the steady stream of delivery drivers picking up orders continues well into the night.
“On holidays, sometimes there’s no choice but to turn customers away because the business simply can’t keep up with demand,” said a former employee.
Even so, Nü announced a few days ago that it was looking for a pizza maker, along with pizzeria and kitchen assistants. This is not the first time it has done so, but unlike previous occasions, the announcement was pinned to the Facebook profiles of several of its managers, implicitly acknowledging that the problem is unlikely to find a lasting solution.
“They know they’ve ‘fallen behind’ on wages, and that’s why the only positions with stable staffing are the customer-facing ones, like waitresses and bartenders, who can make up the difference with tips. Behind the scenes, assistants generally earn 1,250 pesos per shift, while pizza makers and short-order cooks make between 2,000 and 3,000, depending on sales. Those wages haven’t changed in months, and they stopped being competitive a long time ago. The contradiction is that, while they haven’t given raises they have increased menu prices. Most dishes now cost twice as much as they did a year ago,” explained the former employee.
A review of social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, as well as WhatsApp channels, confirms a growing number of job postings in the private sector, while the number of posts from people seeking employment has remained relatively stagnant. Most strikingly, this trend is not limited to Havana and provinces such as Matanzas and Villa Clara, where demand for workers has traditionally been higher. It is also appearing in areas where, until recently, there were more job seekers than available positions.
Camagüey is one such case. Leandro, the owner of a printing shop in the city, complained about “constantly having to train new workers, only to have them leave shortly afterward. Several times I’ve been short-staffed and had to serve customers myself just to avoid closing the shop,” he said. Even low-skilled positions, such as street vendors and parking attendants, are struggling to attract applicants. “People don’t want to work,” declared Ivan Ortiz, who owns a crew specializing in roof construction and said he has had to turn down jobs because of the instability of his workforce.
Better to Hustle on the Streets
Quitting is the only bargaining tool available to private-sector workers in Cuba. When it comes to labor rights, their situation is worse than that of their even lower paid counterparts in the state sector, who are legally entitled to contracts, paid vacation, leave, and retirement benefits. A survey of 25 private-sector workers in the provinces of Camagüey and Ciego de Avila found that only three had permanent employment contracts. All three work for a small private company specializing in refrigeration equipment maintenance, which was forced to formalize its accounting and administrative procedures, including employment contracts for its staff, in order to do business with state enterprises.
The new Labor Code, published in the Official Gazette in mid-September, lists ending informal employment among its main objectives. “We must guarantee all workers the same rights and the same social protection, without distinctions between those in the state and non-state sectors,” declared Minister of Labor and Social Security Jesus Otamendi during the session of the National Assembly devoted to discussing the proposed legislation.
However, the most difficult issue surrounding labor in Cuba was left out of the debate: low wages. Nearly two decades ago, the authorities acknowledged for the first time that most workers did not earn enough to cover their basic needs. That admission, which in any other country would have prompted concrete measures, barely amounted to more than a familiar refrain in official discourse on the island. Senior officials invoke it from time to time to demonstrate their identification with ordinary people.
At the beginning of the current economic liberalization, it seemed that employees in the emerging private sector might finally be able to make a living from their work, thanks to wages that far exceeded those paid by the state. But that hope gradually faded as inflation took its toll.
In April, economist Omar Everleny Perez published his latest “Cost of Living Update,” a study he conducts annually for the digital magazine La Joven Cuba. Since 2022, when he published the first edition, prices have continued to rise, swallowing up successive wage increases in both the state and private sectors. But what happened through the beginning of this year pales in comparison with the past several months, when inflation accelerated dramatically.
From 2025 to 2026, the cost of a basket of basic products rose by 26.7%, with the most serious increases affecting food, whose prices climbed by more than 37%. “The monthly cost for an average two-person household stands at 61,710 pesos ($78 USD) excluding leisure activities, celebrations, extraordinary expenses, and complex family circumstances,” the report states.
Covering such expenses is no easy task, not even in Havana, where wages are considerably higher. Nor have private business owners shown any intention of keeping pace with inflation. The aforementioned survey of workers in Ciego de Ávila and Camagüey revealed that wages have remained relatively stagnant, with increases averaging no more than 20% over the past twelve months. More than half of those surveyed hold two or more jobs simultaneously, and nearly all said they had been forced to cut expenses, including spending on basic necessities.
“People say, ‘If I’m going to struggle to get by while working like a mule, I might as well go out and hustle on the streets.’ That’s where a lot of us are at,” reasoned the former Nü House employee, who now earns his living selling bread on the street. Of those who worked his former shift, only the cleaning assistant remains.
Judging by the posts in employment groups across various social media platforms, this is becoming an increasingly common reality in Cuba’s private sector.