AURORA SHPATAJ
In a post on his Facebook page on March 26 the mayor of Tirana, Erion Veliaj among other things wrote:
“The average salary increased from ALL 58 thousand to ALL 72 thousand per month”.
Screenshot from the official Facebook page of the mayor of Tirana, Erion Veliaj.
Faktoje, which has inspected previously the increase of doctors’ salary and the increase in salary for the category of teachers, this time we decided to fact-check Mr.Veliaj’s statement regarding the increase of the average salary per month in the last 8 years.
Based on the data from INSTAT, Faktoje explored how the average salary has changed during this period.
In 2013, INSTAT did not state the average salary
Year 2014– the average salary of an employee according to INSTATIT is ALL 45.539. Even though we lack data on the average salary of 2013, it can be noted that the average salary claimed by Mr. Veliaj couldn’t have been ALL 58 thousand, but should have been lower.
Year 2015 – the average salary of an employee was 47.900 ALL, thus an increase of ALL 2.361.
Year 2016- average salary at ALL 47.522
Year 2017- average salary at ALL 48.967
Year 2018- average salary at ALL 50.589
Year 2019- average salary at ALL 52.380
Year 2020- average salary at ALL 53.787
Based on the data from INSTAT it turns out that the average salary for 2020 was ALL 53.787, thus ALL 18.213 lower than what the mayor claims.
Graph drawn based on INSTAT data-on the average monthly salary of an employee during 2014-2020
Based on INSTAT data we decided to categorize the mayor’s statement to be False.
