Our History

The History of WageIndicator

Once upon a time our wonderful organisation was founded by two women: journalist Paulien Osse and Prof. Kea Tijdens. The journey started in 1999 with an urgent mission: make salary information accessible for all people on the basis of their experience, education and potential. Most of the information that was provided at that time on salaries and jobs was information for highly educated white men at the top of the labour market. For women, self-employed, the people who take care of your children or clean your house, young people entering the labour market, and for low- and medium-skilled workers, this information was not available. And so Loonwijzer was born - the first WageIndicator of many. With the simple Salary Check on Loonwijzer, appetite grew and soon more Salary Checks came in more countries. In 2004, we expanded to countries across Europe, adding websites such as VotreSalaire, Mojplat, Mojazarplata, MeuSalario and TuSalario. In 2006 we started collecting Minimum Wage information in Paraguay and India, because once you collect salary information for the lower-end of the labour market you can’t emphasise the importance of Minimum Wages enough.

Building the World’s Largest Minimum Wage Database

As India has one of the most complex Minimum Wages systems in the world, we thought it would be best to go from there. Now, we have the largest and most up to date Minimum Wage database in the world for 208 countries and territories. In 2008, the “Decisions for Life” project made us reflect on data points needed across a workers’ life (especially for working women). In order to understand peoples’ trajectory on the labour market we needed insights in minimum wages, salaries and the law. With a quiz for trade union workers in Mozambique, we started our first Decent Work Check which was an overview of labour rights that workers could check themselves. With that initial quiz, the global Labour Law database and our work with the DecentWorkChecks grew. In 2012, we teamed up closely with trade unions and employers across 12 countries in Africa to collect, analyse and annotate collective bargaining agreements (CBAs). This was crucial as in many countries the CBAs were not digitalised nor accessible for workers and trade unions. What followed is a global CBA database and annotation system that covers thousands of topics and thousands of CBAs across most sectors globally.

From Minimum Wages to Living Wages

What happens when you ask a labour economist to calculate Living Wages for 100 countries? He says: “Why not?” And so in 2014, we calculated our first Living Wages - for ‘just’ 100 countries. Our methodology as well as our operations has evolved a lot over the years from online to mostly offline and by foot data collection. We now cover most countries and regions in the world with our global Living Wages database and team of over 400 data collectors. We have our Living Wages publicly available, but also team up with companies - big and small - to get Living Wages implemented across their own operations and supply chains. In addition, we provide Living Income data for all countries and regions, and developed the concept of the Living Tariff: the living wage for self-employed. Over the years, WageIndicator added many names to its operations: Gajimu, Paycheck, Twojezarobki, Rawateb, MyWage, Prake, MiSalario, Lontjek, Berbarometer, Iltuosalario, Luong, to name a few. Additionally, we’ve added topics, codes, and scripts to our databases and communications, such as on the Gig Economy and the rise of Artificial Intelligence.

Our Ongoing Mission

Our goal has always been the same: we give information and structure where this was not the case, we update continuously and we ensure inclusivity and accessibility. By teaming up with academics, journalists and social partners - what we have done since day one - we continue to work towards labour market transparency for all.