Central Planning in Czechoslovakia: Organization for Growth in a Mature Economy

Under the heading "Average wages in the Socialist sector of the national economy," Czechoslovak statistics provide data referring to the average per capita monthly earnings of wage and salary earners, including overtime pay and all kinds of premiums, before deduction of direct taxes (wage taxes), of contributions to national insurance, and of compulsory contributions to unified trade unions ROH. These data exclude the pay of apprentices.

In 1957, data on "average wages" covered 4,532 thousand wage and salary earners out of 6,100 thousand persons "working in the national economy" (see Chapter 1, Section 2), or 74 per cent of the population "working in the national economy." The remaining 26 per cent were members of unified agricultural cooperatives, individual farmers, apprentices, and a handful of self-employed workers, of no economic importance.

Data on "wages in the Socialist sector" cover income of employees of state farms and unified cooperatives; but their number is rather small (8 per cent in 1957), so that the "average wages" are fairly representative for the average per capita income of the nonagricultural population, if we disregard the groups generally excluded from Czechoslovak statistics (the armed forces, police, prisoners, etc.). Today in Czechoslovakia there is no personal income of importance outside agriculture other than from employment; the entrepreneur is practically nonexistent. Income from property is limited to interest from relatively small money deposits in the state banks and other unearned personal income is limited to Health and Social Welfare benefits (see Section 2) and to winnings from state football pools and lotteries; rent from the remaining private houses has to be deposited in blocked accounts, and can be used only for repair of the house.

Average monthly earnings before taxes, etc., in the "Socialist sector," as described above, are to be found, by economic branches, in Table 9. 1.¹

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